For the moment, he didn’t have the answers. He stretched out across the bed, buffered by four, comfy white pillows and continued to contemplate. What was the purpose of his writings in the first place? What was the use in the research and the meticulous thoughts that went into it; and the long hours, days, weeks, months, and years developing meaningful characters, plots, motivations, and conclusions? Who really cared about the shit? And what exactly were readers supposed to do with it all?
Shareef answered his own thoughts and said, “Learn something from it.” But then his conscience argued from the other side. Nobody wants to learn shit. Baby G told you that last night. And you agreed with it. They want blood. They want violence. They want death.
The counterargument paralyzed the rest of Shareef’s thoughts. And if it was valid, then what use was attempting to write to teach? He had it right all along; you write to be successful. And if success meant readership, and women were the ones who read, and they preferred to read romance over crime, then writing about crime meant no readership, and ultimately…failure. So why was he up in Harlem to fail by writing a true-crime book that no one would read? He had even put his life on the line for it? And for what?
Shareef nodded to himself and mumbled, “Dig it. I got a pot full of money and a whole life waiting for me back down in Florida, and I’m up here fucking with this shit. For what?”
He picked his cell phone up to call his wife and kids in Fort Lauderdale.
JENNIFER CRAWFORD stood inside the large, open-area kitchen of her luxurious “mini-mansion,” dressed in long, light-blue cotton pajamas and slippers. She cooked scrambled eggs and turkey bacon at the stove with a white silk scarf wrapped around her head. She listened to sentimental soul music that played from the stereo system in the nearby family room. Her daughter, Kimberly, in pink pajamas, played with two oversize Bratz dolls at the kitchen table. Jennifer’s husband Shareef Sr., and son Shareef Jr., were nowhere in sight. Nevertheless, the music soothed her and made their absence bearable.
“Kimberly, go tell your brother to get down here. Breakfast is almost ready.”
The daughter set her dolls down on the table and ran for the staircase. Before she could make it halfway up, Shareef Jr. scrambled down the stairs in full football gear and nearly trampled her.
“Watch it, boy,” she complained.
“Well, get out of my way then.”
“Mommy told me to get you for breakfast.”
“All right, I’m down here already.”
Jennifer overheard the commotion on the staircase and shook her head. She’d wait to see her son’s face before she commented.
As soon as he walked out to the kitchen table she asked her son, “What is your problem, Shareef?”
“I just want to get to practice on time,” he told her.
Jennifer stared at him. “Shareef, it’s eight o’clock. We have plenty of time to make your practice. It’s not until ten.”
He took off his helmet at the table and said, “Yeah, but once you start getting dressed, we always end up late.”
“Excuse me? Who do you think you’re talking to?” she snapped at him. “You say something else like that and you won’t go to practice today at all.”
Shareef Jr. looked shocked and crippled by it. His faced opened up wide. He asked her, “But why?”
“Why? Because you don’t talk to me like that. I keep telling you about that, Shareef. You need to check your attitude.”
He responded to her with tears in his eyes, “But it’s true, we always end up late.”
“Yes, after I cook, clean, wash, bathe, help you and your sister with your clothes, and then hustle to get my own clothes on…”
Shareef Jr. cut her off and said, “But Mom, you don’t have to be all fancy, just drop me off.” Then he mumbled under his breath, “Or let somebody else take me to practice.”
Jennifer overheard him just as she popped out wheat toast from the toaster. She buttered the toast and made their plates with orange juice in small glasses. And when she marched her son’s plate of food and orange juice over to him at the table, she told him, “You know what, you can take everything back off after you eat, because you’re not going to practice.”
Shareef Jr. pushed himself away from the table in his chair and cried, “Why?”
Jennifer stood in his face with her finger extended to make her point.
“Boy, I will smack you upside your head. You know why? You keep running your damn mouth, and I just told you about that. So now you’re not going to practice.”
That was it for the boy. Tears ran out of his eyes, down his face, and he immediately lost his appetite. Kimberly watched the whole scene and studied it without saying a word. She was learning from it. The best way to get to a boy was to take something away from him that he wanted. It worked with her brother every time. But he deserved it for being mean.
In the heat of the action, the kitchen phone rang, a cordless that sat in its charger on the countertop. Jennifer composed herself before she answered it, especially once she saw who it was on the Caller ID. She figured she had another heated argument coming.
“Hello.”
“Y’all getting ready for football practice this morning?”
She heard his words and took a deep breath. Like father, like son. The man didn’t even say hi to her.
Jennifer brought that up and said, “Hi to you, too, Shareef.”
Her son and daughter both looked toward her on the phone.
“Hi,” her husband responded to her.
“Mmm, hmm,” she grumbled. “Well, you need to talk to your son about practice,” she told him.
“Why?”
“Here he is.” Jennifer handed the phone to her son without another word to his father.
Shareef Jr. took the phone and mumbled, “She won’t let me go.” He listened to the obvious question and answered, “Because I had an attitude. But Dad, I just don’t want to be late all the time.”
Jennifer jumped in and said, “Boy, you’ve only had a week of practice. You’re not gonna be late all the time. Don’t even try that.”
“Let me talk to your mother,” Shareef told his son.
“Okay. Mom?”
Shareef Jr. extended the cordless phone back to his mother.
“Hey, Daddy,” Kimberly hollered into the phone as her mother reclaimed it.
“He’ll talk to you in a minute, honey,” Jennifer told her daughter. She expected an extended conversation with her estranged husband about football practice, running late, and aggravating their son. She expected to counter with an argument to respect her as a mother, respect her as a wife, respect her as a woman, and respect all of the damn work she continued to perform around the house and outside of the house to keep their family together and to protect their name regardless of his transgressions. But Shareef changed the whole subject on her.
He said, “You used to be a lot more fun than this, Jennifer. I didn’t call you the Golden Girl for nothing. You used to have a shine. I miss that. In fact, I wouldn’t have married you without it. But you lost it, man. And you need to get it back.”
He said, “You need to get that excitement back in your life and learn how to have fun with your family again.”
Jennifer couldn’t believe her ears. How could she concentrate on “having fun” with bitches disrespecting her marriage, her kids, her family, her home, her womanhood, and her ability to think straight after he had allowed them to through his cheating? How dare he say some shit to her like that? And if the kids were not around her, she would curse his ass out for it. But since they were, she simply refuted it.
“I do know how to have fun. But the problem is, you never want to participate in anything I like to do. It’s always about what you want,” she told him.
Shareef paused over the line. It was the same old argument; his way or her way, his thing or her thing, his idea or her idea.
He finally said, “Look, I wish I could be the man you need me to be
for you, but I am who I am, and you knew that when you married me. I haven’t lied to you in any way.”
Jennifer was ready to jump out of her skin. He hadn’t lied to her in any way? Who the hell was he talking to? He was a bold-faced liar! He had been lying about his commitment to their marriage for years! Had he lost his fucking mind! But instead of cursing him out in front of the children, Jennifer smiled at the ridiculousness of his charge and walked away from the kitchen with the phone in hand. She was walking toward the front door where she could step outside, shut the door behind her, and speak frankly.
“Hold on,” she told her husband as she made it to the front door. She couldn’t wait. And as soon as she reached her destination outside the house, she repeated, “You said you haven’t lied to me in any way? Is that what you said? So, you didn’t lie to me whenever I asked you where you were and who you were with whenever you went out of town on your little book events.”
Shareef paused again. He said, “Every single time, I went and handled my business, just like I’m doing right now.”
“Yeah, and then you went and handled some little freak, too. And then you wonder why I don’t want you to touch me. Probably had some little ho in New York with you. Didn’t you?”
Shareef was at a moral crossroad. What came first, the chicken or the egg? If Jennifer had simply taken care of her business as his woman like she used to, he would have had less need to chase and capture. He would still look and wonder. Every man looks and wonders. But the chase and capture game was all about the frustration of unused energy at home.
Shareef wasn’t a liar. He was too transparent to lie. He wore his heart on his sleeve for everyone to see. That’s why people respected him. He told them what the truth was every time, even when he was a young Harlem snot nose. But he had energies to deal with; energies that Jennifer knew about firsthand. Energies that had attracted her to him. Energies that had given her a beautiful life, home, family, children, and lovely vacations. But his energies meant nothing to her without his loyalty. A man’s loyalty to his woman was pivotal, but what about her loyalty to him as his wife? What did that loyalty mean? And how did loyal people act to one another?
Shareef finally blew his lid and spat, “You don’t get shit in this world for free, Jennifer! You gotta pay for the shit I give you. That’s just the way life is. Grow the fuck up and stop thinking somebody gon’ give you something without work!”
He said, “We all gotta fuckin’ work in this life, girl. So if your job as a wife is to fuck your husband for all of the things that he does for you, then you fuck your husband! Is that so hard to do? Am I an ugly-ass man now? I didn’t used to be. Other women don’t think so.”
He said, “And don’t tell me no shit about no cooking, cleaning, washing, and all of that. Because I’ve never sweated you about that. I can hire a chef, a maid, and a housekeeper for that. I know you’re an educated, working woman. But I can’t have no wife I can’t touch when I come home. What I gotta make a fuckin’ appointment for you? Mark the shit off on your little calendars? Well, fuck that! I’m not living like that. And if you thought you married a man who would just sit there and stand for that shit, then you got me wrong. But you know me better than that. You knew I wasn’t gonna go for that shit. So what the fuck was you thinking?”
Jennifer took all of his heat and responded to him calmly, “I was thinking that you would treat your wife with respect and honor, that you would cherish your wife and stay committed to her. I had no idea that I owed you anything for loving me. But obviously, I was wrong, Shareef. I was wrong for ever marrying you. Because it’s obvious to me now that you don’t really want a wife. You want a live-in whore you can do what you want to with and have your way with, and I’m sorry to disappoint you because I’m not that kind of a woman.”
She pressed the off button on the cordless phone and hung up on him. But then she realized that Kimberly had not had a chance to speak to her father. And what about Shareef Jr. and his football practice? She wanted to teach him a lesson on how to act to make sure he was never rewarded for disrespectful behavior, but at the same time, she never wanted to stop either of her children from doing what they wanted to do and enjoying themselves in life.
But there’s a right and a wrong way to do things, she argued to herself. And Shareef is not right, she insisted. Nevertheless, it hurt her that her son and husband were so deliberate in having things their way. If only boys and men would learn to just…behave. But since they didn’t, and she couldn’t seem to win either of them over without bringing so much pain to herself in her forceful attempts to maintain dignity, she took a seat on the front steps of her home and began to cry.
Being a smart, respectable wife; a good, responsible mother; and a mature and honorable woman seemed to be a torturous affair. But Jennifer was determined to maintain her stature. And no matter how much the struggle seemed to hurt her, she was no man’s doormat and would never allow herself to be walked over.
SHAREEF STOOD UP from his bed at the Hudson Hotel in Times Square and was pissed. He looked at his cell phone after his wife had hung up on him, and he thought of throwing it up against the wall and breaking it. But instead he threw it down against the soft pillows.
“Mother-…” he began to curse and caught himself. He was breathing heavily and pacing the small room from the window next to the bed, all the way to the front door and back.
“Fuckin’ girl gon’ change up on a nigga,” he mumbled to himself. “She’s the one who lied from day one. I thought she loved me. But now she don’t wanna touch a motherfucker after all I gave her. After all I fuckin’ gave her!”
He couldn’t understand how his wife could live in a million-dollar home and not honor his passion for her. They had dreamed about their lives together. They had discussed it before marriage. And Shareef just assumed that their sex life would remain as it was when they were dating, a heated, passionate, spontaneous romp.
He burst out and screamed, “Why you fuckin’ lie to me?!” to the hotel walls. Then he sat on the edge of the bed with tears building in his own eyes. He even felt his chest tighten up.
He put his right hand over his heart to calm himself down from the stress.
“Okay…now she’s try’na kill me,” he stated. He stood back up from the bed to pace the room again with his hand still placed over his chest. He said, “Well, you know what? Since it’s all about me, that’s how it’s gon’ be then. I’m not gon’ be respected for writing no fuckin’ romance shit just to pay for your ass. So I’m gon’ do me now, all the fuckin’ way. That’s what I’m supposed to do, right?”
He continued to pace the room with angry energy, while going over his thoughts and decisions out loud.
“Richard Wright wrote about the streets. Chester Himes wrote about it. Langston Hughes. Eldridge Cleaver. Iceberg Slim. Donald Goines. James Baldwin. Ishmael Reed. Claude Brown. They all wrote about the streets. And their shit lasted. And not one of them is famous for writing some romance shit. None of them!”
He mumbled, “I can’t even hold down my own fuckin’ romance, so how the hell I’m gon’ write about that shit for other people? It’s hypocritical. It’s all about the money.”
Then he stopped in his tracks and stood still in the room. He said, “Well, you know what? Thank you, baby. Thank you for lettin’ me see what I need to do. It’s a clear picture now. I’m right where I’m supposed to be. I’m a street nigga. I was born to the streets. Harlem! I don’t even know my parents. So if I die fuckin’ with this book, then that’s my legacy. But I’m not running from shit. And if you don’t want to be a part of my life, then that’s your fuckin’ problem. You can stay your ass out in the fuckin’ suburbs.”
Just as he got all the ranting out of his system, his cell phone rang from the bed. He walked over and picked it up to view the number. It was his wife calling him back from home.
Shareef exhaled and shook his head. “What she got to say to me now?” he grumbled. He answered her call anyway
. “Hello.”
“Your daughter wants to speak to you,” Jennifer told him. She put Kimberly on the line.
“Hey, Daddy.”
Shareef went soft again. “Hey, baby girl. Did you have a good breakfast this morning?”
“Yeah, but I don’t like eggs.”
“Yeah, I know. You like cinnamon toast with butter. And a glass of milk.”
“Yup,” she confirmed with a giggle.
Shareef listened to his daughter and smiled. Family was family, no matter what. And he would never forsake his children. But at the same time, he had a job to do in Harlem, and he remained focused on getting that job done.
Your daddy ain’t no punk, he thought to tell his seven-year-old daughter. For nobody! So after a brief conversation he told his daughter that he loved her, ended the call, and prepared his mind to get back to business in Harlem, USA.
FIRST SHAREEF CALLED BACK his friend Polo. And as soon as Polo answered the call, he went into overdrive.
“Yo, where you at, B? The cops are looking for you. Don’t go back to that hotel, man.”
“The cops are looking for me for what?” Shareef asked him.
“Them killas who were after you got shot up last night. Only one who got away was the driver.”
Shareef said, “What does that have to do with me?”
“What does that have to do with you? The cops feel like you hired them. They think they were part of your crew.”
Shareef thought about that and said, “Even so, it would be self-defense, right? I mean, them guys were trying to kill me, man. It wasn’t like they got shot for no reason.”
Shareef was already siding with Baby G and his team. It was old-school loyalty. The kid had looked out for him in a life-and-death crisis, and Shareef had to respect him for that.
Polo paused a minute. He said, “Yo, you don’t want to tell the cops that. Just say you don’t know who they were. I mean, you didn’t know who they were, right?”