Black Chuck spread his hands. “Look, I ain’t saying nothing.”
I walked off and dialed Eric’s cell. I got his voice mail. “I hear you’re at Scrap’s getting high with everybody. Should I thank you for not inviting me?”
Five minutes later I got a text message.
im sorry. dont want u doin this. u r my divine
INNOCENT
You’re not like the other chicks in the gang,” Eric told me that night on my couch. “They’re getting high, like, every night. Today the shit was harder. I didn’t think you’d want to be around.”
“You’re right about that.”
“Good. Don’t ever let them tempt you. They like to see the innocent ones get fucked up.”
“What about my girls—they weren’t there, were they?”
“Nah, they weren’t invited.”
“So how does it work—you guys test it out before you sell it?”
Eric’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t sell or use. You know that.”
“I know. But the others do, right? I mean, the lieutenants?”
“Yeah. I guess it ain’t hard to figure out.”
“Not hard at all. Look, Eric, just be careful. You could get caught if there’s a raid.”
“I’ve been thinking about that too. I’ll be careful. Next time I’ll find a reason to stay away. Anyway, they don’t keep that shit in the house most of the time—they were just trying a new cut.”
“You didn’t try anything?”
“I told you I don’t use. I won’t say I haven’t tried a few things in the past, but not anymore. Today I just had a few beers.”
“I can smell that.”
“Do I need a mint?”
“It’s okay. What did you try—in the past?”
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever I did, I tried to do it safely.”
“Do it safely—yeah, right.”
“Getting preachy on me?”
“No . . .” I looked into his eyes. God, those eyes made my insides melt. “I don’t care if I act like your mom, Eric. I only do it because I love you.”
Total mistake!
“Sorry, it kinda slipped out.” My face felt hot. “I’m not trying to freak you out.”
He lifted my chin. “You’re totally freaking me out, Julia. But it’s okay, because I know what you mean.”
He kissed me. God, was he kissing me.
I loved him. So much. More than I should.
But I didn’t care. I only cared that he was kissing me and his hands were all over me.
I tasted beer in his mouth, and I liked it. I tasted him deeper, and he tasted me.
He groaned.
I gasped at the feel of his hard body coming down on top of me.
His hips ground against mine.
He wanted me.
Badly.
Like I wanted him.
“You drive me crazy. . . .”
“Eric . . .”
“Julia . . .”
“Don’t worry, I won’t . . .”
“I know you won’t. Let’s just have . . .”
“. . . fun . . .”
He pulled up my shirt and started kissing my stomach. Heat licked through my body. I closed my eyes, loving the sensations. His hands found my breasts.
Wow.
Oh WOW.
I stopped thinking. I grabbed his shirt and pulled it out of his pants, ripping it over his head, messing up his hair.
His chest was gorgeous. Lean, light brown. Hard with muscle.
He kissed my lips, my cheeks, my neck. I grabbed his shoulders.
He had a tattoo in between his shoulder blades.
A five-pointed crown.
I’d have to ask him what it meant—later.
For now . . .
. . . some FUN . . .
DADDY DEAREST
Haven’t seen Q in a while,” Dad commented without looking up from the Sunday paper.
I was passing through the kitchen on my way to the door. I stopped in my tracks. “Haven’t seen you in a while either, Dad.”
That got his attention. His head snapped up. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing. I’ll see you later.” I headed for the door.
“Julia.”
“What?”
“Did something happen with your friends?”
“They blew me off. It happens.”
“So who are you with all the time then? Eric?”
“Who are you with, Dad?”
He looked surprised. “Whoever they are, they’ve given you a real attitude.”
“Nobody gives you an attitude. You have it or you don’t.”
“Look, if you’re upset about your friends, why don’t you tell me about it?”
“I’m not upset about my friends. You ask questions when it’s convenient for you. You act like a dad when you feel like it. The rest of the time you’re out with your girl or your buddies like I don’t exist.”
His face paled. “Is that how you feel?”
“No. I’m making small talk.”
“I thought you appreciated your independence.”
“I . . .” God, I was stupid. I hadn’t realized the outburst was inside me until it came out. Why did I bother?
“I’ll cancel my plans with Gina today. We’ll go out for dinner.”
“Thanks, but I’m meeting friends. I’ve gotta go.”
“Wait.”
Dad came over and hugged me.
All I could think was:
He’ll get sympathy from Gina when she hears of his daughter’s bitch-fit. Maybe she’s got PMS, she’ll say. Don’t worry, Tony. Let’s go to a show.
And he’ll forget the whole thing.
As usual.
BEING BLUE
Being Blue on the streets of Flatbush was like being part of a big, loud, dysfunctional family. The daddy was Scrap. He wore the pants in the gang. Nobody who didn’t want to get beaten or cut messed with him.
The mama was Latoya, Scrap’s live-in girlfriend. She was the sister of Prince, head of the Flatbush Sha-Tas, a well-known gang imported from Jamaica. The relationship meant a truce between the two gangs and an alliance against local Bloods and the Haitian Mafia. Latoya took care of everybody: her three kids (the last two by Scrap), the lieutenants, and the younger gang members. She fed us, gave us booze and blunts, and fought off nosy relatives who crashed our parties. Most of all, she babied Scrap 24-7.
The senior gang members were Scrap’s “lieutenants.” They were usually full-time hustlers. With no education or jobs, the lieutenants’ lives revolved around the gang, and they did whatever Scrap asked them to do—jacked cars, robbed places, pimped, pushed drugs. Lucky for me, they kept the lower members in the dark about that shit, especially the hard dealing. I figured they weren’t trying to protect us; they were protecting themselves. And that was fine with me. I didn’t want to end up in juvey because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Scrap’s lieutenants—Karl, Fathead, Clyde, Max, and Messiah—were the shadiest group I’d ever met. When I was younger, I called guys like them “corner thugs” because they hung around on street corners, catcalling girls and being a pain.
Black Chuck’s friend Rolo, aka Dexter Watson, was a lieutenant-in-training. According to Eric, Scrap would probably initiate Rolo on his eighteenth birthday, a few months off. He was a good choice because he had all the makings of a corner thug—he rarely went to school, he hustled anything he could get his hands on, and he’d been in and out of juvey for years. That’s what happens when you can never pass a Blood on the street without getting into a fight.
Our hangouts were record shops, lounges, diners, and street corners. Party Central was Black Chuck’s place, where peeps chilled most nights, smoking weed and playing Xbox, drinking Hennessy or Bud, eating greasy Chinese or Jamaican food.
You could count on a party every Friday night, with dozens of FJC, twenty flavors of weed, BYOB, and dancing girls. The nasty stuff went on downstairs and ups
tairs—so I stuck to the kitchen and den.
I got along great with the Crip girls who went to my school. Too bad the neighborhood FJC girls didn’t warm up to me much.
“It’s ’cause you new,” Nessa explained.
“It’s ’cause you pretty,” Sarah said.
But to me it really didn’t matter. I had a group of girlfriends now, and that was all I needed.
My closest friend was Jazz, aka Jasmine Hughes. She was a junior at South Bay too, and she’d been in the gang since she was a freshman. Her big brother, Clyde, was one of Scrap’s lieutenants.
Jasmine was light-skinned with freckles and was always talking about losing twenty pounds. She talked trash like the rest of them, but deep down, she was sweet and sensitive—a closet poet. She and Clyde were being raised by their grandma, because their mom was in prison down in Florida and their dad was nowhere to be found.
It wasn’t unusual in the gang.
Once, when I bitched about my dad, Eric said, “You got nothing to complain about. Most of the Crip kids don’t even have a dad. Some don’t even have a mom. They grow up with relatives too damn old to take care of them. Or who just don’t give a shit. Or foster parents who do it for the money. But at least they got the Crips.”
Eric was right. We had a family bigger than our own.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
I met Black Chuck and Eric at the bus stop at 7:37 a.m.
Black Chuck was pumped. “This is gonna be sick!”
“How many eggs have we got?” Eric asked.
“Only three dozen. Went to four different stores last night and that’s all I could find.” Black Chuck looked at me. “Better put your hood up. You don’t wanna get Nair in your pretty hair.”
“That’s an urban legend. Nobody really does that.”
“You’re wrong, Ju. It happened to my cousin last year. At close range. Had to shave his head.”
I swallowed.
“This shit is tame compared to DT,” Eric said. “Last night was the big night—we call it Devil’s Night. Whole damn city gets trashed.”
The normally crowded bus was dead. The only one I recognized from South Bay was Ivan Kurtsov, a stocky, glasses-wearing honors student. He gave us a solemn nod as if to say, “Good luck.”
“You worried?” Eric asked, his eyes teasing.
“Not really.”
“I still don’t know why you wanted to go to school. You said nobody shows up on Halloween.”
“Right, and teachers give out mad bonus points. I need those points. You should go to your classes—I bet you could use the points, too.”
“I would, but we’re meeting some Crips on the roof. I’m guessing when we’re done we’ll be taking off in a hurry.”
“Oh. So you won’t be around to walk me back to the bus stop?”
He grinned and kissed my hair. “Call me. I’ll come get you.”
When we got off the bus, the guys put their caps on and tucked some eggs into their pockets just in case. I put up the hood of my old raincoat. Scanning the area, we didn’t see anybody suspicious. I looked down Avenue X toward the school. It had the eerie look of a ghost town.
We crossed Nostrand and started down Avenue X. Ivan was right behind us. I wasn’t at all sure there was safety in numbers, but I wasn’t going to tell him to stop walking with us.
Eric and Black Chuck were scanning nearby alleys and rooftops for threats, hands in their pockets. We picked up the pace as we passed in front of the South Bay projects, the stretch where we were the most exposed. We’d decided earlier that we were safer on this side of the road than if we walked past the stores, where snipers could pop up anywhere.
We crossed the street at the last possible second. We were almost in front of the school now. Just a few yards to go before we came under the protection of the security guards. Adrenaline pumped through my blood. We were going to make it. Sure, they’d probably spotted us, but—
Smack. An egg hit me square in the back. We swung around to see a bunch of kids crouched between parked cars, pelting us with a stream of eggs.
I felt Eric’s hand push me along. “Go!”
I broke into a run, felt an impact against my shoulder, against my book bag. Ivan grunted as the eggs hit him, covering his head with his hands and muttering curses.
Eric and Black Chuck weren’t running with us. I glanced back to see them holding their position behind a parked car, firing back. Chuck had dropped his bag and they were digging into it for more ammo.
Ivan and I did a 90-degree turn onto the school grounds, past two security guards. Once I knew I was safe, I stopped and looked back.
Eric and Black Chuck might have been outnumbered, but they were stronger and had better aim than their attackers, who were probably freshmen. Two of the kids had already run off and the others were wearing down. Suddenly Eric and Black Chuck burst out from behind the car and ran straight for them. The kids took off down an alley beside a convenience store, the guys right on their heels.
I waited a few minutes for them to come back. When they did, they were out of breath but smiling.
“Hope you didn’t hurt them too bad,” I said.
Black Chuck grinned. “Let’s just say they got their protein for the day.”
Eric slapped him five. “Bodybuilder’s cocktail, eh?”
We all laughed.
“Heading up to the roof now?” I asked.
“For all the good it’ll do,” Black Chuck said, shaking his head. “Wasted all our ammo on those little shits.”
FUN, CRIP-STYLE
It was almost midnight. People gathered in the fenced-in yard of a local private school. Eric, sweetie that he was, used his switchblade to jerk open the locked gate so I wouldn’t have to climb over the fence and tear my jeans.
A bunch of people dangled from the jungle gym. Eric grabbed a swing and pulled me onto his lap.
“It’s brick out here,” I said.
He opened his jacket and pulled me close.
I snuggled in to his chest. “Are you gonna tell me what this thing is about?”
“Scrap organized it. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
“There’s going to be a fight?”
“You’ll see.”
“Hey, guys!” Jazz came up behind our swing and gave us a push. “What up?”
I hung on to Eric as we swung back. “Nothing. I have no idea what I’m doing here.”
Jazz shot Eric a look. “You think this is Innocent’s sorta thing?”
He shrugged. “She’s part of us. She should know what we do.”
A weird kind of excitement twisted my gut.
Five minutes after midnight, Scrap pulled up in his vintage Caddy. Latoya was with him. Black Chuck, Rolo, and Clyde jumped out of the back.
“Yo, everybody get into position!” Scrap shouted.
Crips jumped off the jungle gym into the sand. Eric lifted me off his lap and put me down. “Remember one thing, Divine. Whatever happens, don’t get involved.”
I frowned. “Whatever that means.”
Everybody was forming a circle. We slid in beside Jazz.
Scrap went into the middle, doing a little dance and ending it with a spin. “How you doing?”
We shouted back.
“You hyped?”
“Yeahhh!”
“Good—tonight’s gonna be off the hook! We got lots of new fighters. This first competition’s gonna crack you up—meet Moe the Hobo and Slow Stan!”
Two grizzled homeless men stumbled into the circle.
I elbowed Eric. “What the hell is this?”
“Bum fight.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Chill. Nobody’s gonna die.”
“People are betting on this?”
“Yeah. Do you want to? I think Moe’s gonna whoop Stan’s ass.”
“That’s disgusting!”
The fight started. Moe slapped Stan, who touched his cheek like he didn’t know what was going on. “You b
-b-bastard!” Stan smacked back, and then they were grappling, pulling each other’s hair, punching each other.
At one point, Rolo crept up behind them and pushed them both to the ground. Everybody cheered.
I watched in sick fascination. I wanted it to be over already, and yet I couldn’t look away—until Moe had Stan pinned and started pounding his face.
“Stop it!” I screamed at Eric.
“Scrap will stop it.”
And he did, seconds later. Scrap helped Moe off the ground, awarded him fifty bucks and a huge bottle of Absolut. Moe stumbled off.
Stan was having some trouble getting up. His beard was matted with blood. Nobody wanted to get near him. Eventually he got up by himself, took a towel from Latoya and his twenty bucks for participating, and walked off to the sound of mocking cheers.
“My stomach is sick,” I said to Eric. “Are they all going to be like that?”
“No. That’s the only bum fight tonight.”
From Scrap’s ride, Lil Wayne pumped. Some of us started grooving. I wished I could forget what I’d just seen. Eric grooved behind me. Damn, he was good at distracting me.
I stopped moving when I saw the next fighters in flashy red robes.
They looked about twelve years old.
Scrap danced into the middle of the circle and then—his trademark spin. “The next fight is between two of the baddest motherfuckas in Brooklyn. Our boy gladiators: Peace and Feather.”
Eric said, “Gladiator tradition. Gotta have pussy names.”
“You know this is fucked up, right?”
“We’re training the next generation.”
“That doesn’t make it any less fucked up.”
The kids fought fast and vicious like two mini Mike Tysons on speed. I could hardly follow what was happening, but at some point Peace took control. He fought like a little demon, smashing a fist into his opponent’s ribs, and another and another, hustling him out of the circle.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Scrap grabbed the two kids by the backs of their necks. “I think we got a winner—young Peace, Marlon Jones!”
The kid pranced around in a victory dance, not caring that blood was pouring from his nose. The other kid cursed and stamped his foot, vowing revenge.