Head didn’t respond to her comment. He wasn’t too thrilled about her goodies after Cartier had left him aching for her undivided attention.
The midnight hour was approaching when Head arrived at Pebbles’ place. When he knocked on her door, she answered wearing lingerie to impress him. But he wasn’t impressed. He looked at Pebbles as a woman who couldn’t keep her shit together.
“It took you long enough. I was starting to think that you didn’t want this pussy,” Pebbles said with a seductive smile on her face.
He pushed her to the side and marched into the apartment like he was on some kind of mission. Pebbles didn’t know what to expect from him, and she was surprised that he would help her at all, but she was desperate and didn’t have anyone else to call. After Head stormed out her apartment last month he began ghosting her. She had left numerous messages and he didn’t return near one. Pebbles cried day and night because it was all so sudden and unprovoked. She knew he had run right back into the arms of Cartier, and Pebbles wanted revenge. But for now she was biding her time and playing her position. Her mother always said a nigga will always circle back around. And there he was.
“I know I fucked up with the social media posts, but could you please give me another chance? I don’t want to lose you,” she begged.
The first thing he did was go into his pocket and remove a wad of hundred-dollar bills. The knot looked like a small boulder in his hand and Pebbles’ eyes lit up. He tossed it her way and she caught it like a home run catch.
“Thank you, Henry. Now let me return the favor because you always know how to take care of me,” she said.
She moved closer to him, ready to drop to her knees and suck his dick. But Head resisted, uttering, “Nah. Chill.”
She felt rejected but didn’t want his slight to show on her face. If it was over between them, why would he be there bailing her out? He fixed his eyes on her like a parent ready to reprimand a child.
“What happened to the twenty large I gave you?”
“Baby, you know that money was spent on things I needed to expand my brand,” she answered.
“You see, that’s the problem, Pebbles—you putting things before your priorities. You have two kids that you rarely see ’cause you running the streets like you half your age! You’re a mom, Pebbles. Did you forget that? Did you even send your moms any of that money?”
“How dare you!”
“Easily.”
Pebbles stood there looking dumbfounded at Head. She had no idea why he was coming at her suddenly about her parenting skills.
“You’re being cruel right now! I’m a great mom,” she cried out.
“I’m saying these things because I want you to do better. You are a black woman caught up in this hype created by the white devil.”
“Well, this is me. Take it or leave it.”
“I already left it,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Aaaaaah,” she yelled out, hollering like a fool. “I hate you! I hate you! You used me, Head. You fuckin’ used me!”
“Calm down,” he began. “And stop being dramatic.”
“I am not,” she pouted.
“Pebbles, you need to change your ways. When you would come to see me all you did was talk about your kids, your responsibilities, and how you were building your empire. I’ve been home over two months and you ain’t been with your kids yet. The woman you said you are is different from the woman you actually is.”
“Look who’s talking!”
“What you saying?”
“I’m saying you got weirdo tendencies too! I don’t know who you consistently are either. You go to bed one nigga and wake up another, but I tolerate it because I learned that it takes a lifetime to really know someone.”
Head slowly nodded and took in her words.
“Listen, I’m not your man and you’re not my girl. I just got home and I need my freedom,” he bluntly told her.
“But what about the promises you made to me when you was locked up? You promised that we would always be together and that you would take care of me and I would take care of you. We promised that we would always be there for each other. I sucked your dick, fucked you how you wanna be fucked, I invited you into my home, and you do me like this?”
He stared at her with no consideration for her feelings. “Those were words of a caged man, and you know how the game goes.”
A river of tears flowed from Pebbles’ eyes, and she fell to her knees. It looked like she was ready to have a panic attack in front of him.
Head went closer to her and crouched to her level. He took her chin into his hands and looked at her directly. “I love you and I will never leave you, Pebbles, but all this calling me twenty-four seven and wanting an explanation about my whereabouts—it needs to stop. You need to fall back from me.”
It was going to be hard for her. She loved him more than anyone else. She didn’t want to leave his side. She needed him. The sex was good, but he was her rock—her shoulder to lean on when things got hard. But she also wasn’t stupid. Pebbles knew that their conversation meant that Cartier was most likely back in his life—that she had taken him back. She could see it in his eyes. His interest rested with another woman.
“Look,” he continued, standing upright and staring down at her tear stained face, “I’m gonna start being out of town a lot more. I got something set up in Flint, Michigan and things are going good out there. I’m making some serious moves.”
“Flint again?” she questioned.
“There you go with the questions. Didn’t I just explain your position? Play your part.”
“It’s good to tell someone your secrets just in case something happens to you. You know the game.”
“It’s business, Pebbles—something you wouldn’t understand.”
After he said that, he went to the door. He didn’t even look back at Pebbles as she continued to hug the floor in grief over his parting words. He coldly made his exit and closed the door behind him—like he was closing her out of his life.
14
Cartier opened her front door to see a smiling Head. “Can I get a key?”
“Nigga, please. You’re lucky you even get to step foot into my home,” Cartier replied.
Head laughed. He was happy to be there, and it showed in the way he seemed to glow. Cartier stepped to the side and Head walked into her apartment. For the past two weeks he’d been sleeping at Cartier’s place. He had gradually come back into her life and was working on her heart. Cartier had decided to give Head a second chance. She believed that he and Pebbles were no longer together and that maybe the two of them could make it work again.
Their relationship had become amicable. They would talk and laugh; still, they hadn’t had sex yet. Cartier didn’t want to give him the pussy so easily. Head would have to earn it again, and she made that clear as day to him. He could come by and stay, and they could chill together, but she wasn’t fucking him—not yet anyway. Head understood.
“So you’re definitely done with Pebbles, right? I’m not your side bitch, Head,” she had asked him.
“I don’t fuck with her anymore. You see she don’t call me anymore.” He held up his cell phone like it would confirm his story.
“How I know who calls and who don’t? I have to take your word—that’s why I’m asking.”
“Look, you don’t have nothing to worry about. She was a mistake. Period.”
Cartier decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Head felt like he was right at home with Cartier. The vibe with her was completely different than when he was with Pebbles. When the two of them were in the same room there was no telling what was going to happen. Their conversations were intelligent and mind-blowing—from politics, beliefs and religion, history, and the streets. There was a spark between them. There was history between them. And Cartier always ch
allenged Head. She wasn’t any pushover.
What Head respected most about Cartier after staying with her for two weeks was that she was on her grind. She had multiple irons in the fire, although he didn’t agree with her drug distribution ring. She knew how to multi-task, and the respect she had on the streets turned Head on. She didn’t need social media to represent her—to define her. She wasn’t some shallow bitch looking for attention from complete strangers and pressing them for likes on her pages. She had no page.
“This is where I want to be, Cartier,” he wholeheartedly expressed to her.
She didn’t mind having him there either. They had their differences over the years, but Head had always been good company.
A few nights later Head was taking a shower and the bathroom door opened. Cartier pulled back the shower curtain to reveal her naked body and joined him. It was unexpected, but he welcomed her. The two became passionately entwined under the cascading water, and their sexual act went from the shower to the bedroom, where Head exploded inside of her like fireworks. It felt like love, and it had been a long time.
After their sexual tryst, the two lay snuggled in her bed having pillow talk. The 60” TV was playing the evening news. Something the anchor said caught Head’s attention. Another young and unarmed teen was shot and killed by the police in Brownsville. The news angered him.
“The black community is raging out of control, especially with these police shootings,” Cartier said.
Head looked at her and replied, “Black community? So you believe Brownsville, and every black neighborhood, is truly a black community?”
“Yes.”
“Open your eyes, Cartier. There is no such thing as a black community, especially in America.”
“What you mean?” she replied, intrigued by his remark.
“If it was accurately a black community then we would own things in the community. We would make our own laws and police our own people. We would run the schools, and we would have black businesses that stretched from block to block. So how can it be a black community when we don’t own or control anything in that community?”
“So you learned all that in prison? You got your GED in black supremacy?” she joked with him.
“It’s not a laughing matter out here, Cartier. This is serious.”
“I never said that it wasn’t. So what else they teach you inside there?” she asked.
“Don’t mock me, Cartier.”
“Who said I was mocking you?”
“I know you . . .”
“And?”
It didn’t take long for them to get into a debate about society issues and politics. Head hated the white man. He felt that they were pushing global supremacy and they believed the black man was inferior. He believed that the white man was without a doubt the devil.
Cartier made the mistake of saying, “Not all white people are alike. And not all of them can be the devil.”
“They got you brainwashed, Cartier,” he barked.
“Nigga, you the one brainwashed with that foolishness you trying to preach to me,” she countered. “Since when did you become a racist?”
“Black people cannot be racist,” he returned.
“Says who?”
“Do you know the definition of a racist?” he responded. “A black man can be prejudiced, but he can’t be a racist. Racism is systemic—it’s institutional. Racism is prejudice plus power, and a black man can become prejudiced because of racism,” he explained.
They continued to argue in bed over a variety of things, including a woman’s right to choose.
“They should abolish abortion. These women flush babies down the drain like they flush the toilet. It’s outta hand. Someone needs to speak up for these unborn kids.”
“I know you ain’t talking. How many bitches you ushered to the clinic? Y’all muthafuckas hardly spend any time raising these babies y’all wanna save. And don’t get me started on the men who feel like they should get a medal for paying child support.”
“That ain’t all men.” Some of the bass in his voice had disappeared.
Cartier continued with, “Those same politicians voting pro-life would send their mistresses to the abortion clinic if their careers, wealth, or home lives were threatened. Forty-five paid hush money, but what you think he would have done if she was pregnant? Abortion would be the first, last, and only option. It’s always the perverts who vote conservative.”
Head was silent.
“I thought so, nigga!”
“Come on, ma. Chill with the nigga talk.”
“Negro, please!”
15
Hey, do you have another cigarette?” Sana asked Cindy, a preppy white girl who shared some classes with her.
“Sure,” Cindy replied.
Sana was hanging out on campus with her white girl crew, pretending to be all white and from one of the same upper-class neighborhoods they were from. Sana was embarrassed she had a black mother and a white father—a white man who had abandoned her and her mother a long time ago.
Sana’s mother was tired of Sana desperately wanting to be identified as white, and she finally tossed her own daughter out on the streets. “Now go see if those white muthafuckas will help you out since you so badly want to become them,” she had said to Sana.
And she did. She even cursed back at her mother. “Fuck you! A white mother would never do her daughter like this. That’s why I hate you!”
Sana Laurent laughed and smiled in her white tennis skirt, powder white sneakers, and a classy white top, looking like she belonged to a privileged golf club. She puffed on her cigarette and enjoyed the company she kept. Cindy came from money, with both her parents being doctors. Tina grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and she had a nanny and a butler and a trust fund in her name. Margret’s father was a hedge fund manager and every year he bought her a new fancy car to drive to school and show off in. Tiffany’s mother was a topnotch attorney and her father owned several successful nightclubs in the Tri-State Area. These white girls had the money, the lifestyle, and the privilege that Sana had always dreamed about having. She envied them, but she wanted to learn from them and ride their coattails so she could become just like them.
“I heard the blacks are planning a march tomorrow for that black boy that got killed by that cop in Brooklyn,” Tina mentioned.
“Another march—that’s all those people do is march, protest, and complain about everything going on with their lives when they should blame themselves for what’s wrong. They should be happy to be in this country and not in Africa being chased and eaten by lions,” said Margret.
The girls laughed, including Sana.
Sana added her two cents. “It’s sad. This country gives them all the opportunities to succeed, and yet, they choose to be lazy, violent, ignorant, angry, and want to blame all of their problems on white people.”
“Yes. Preach, Sana, Amen! Amen! Hallelujah,” Tina joked, mocking the black church.
“And don’t get me started on the black woman, who wants to have multiple children but can’t afford to take care of any of them. So they need government assistance and want to waste our tax dollars because they want to open their legs and get pregnant all the time by these thugs,” Tiffany added.
“And I hate to say this, especially with so many of these black lazy girls getting pregnant and not being able to take care of their kids, but I agree with the GOP on a woman not having the right to choose. Hey, you made your bed now lie in it,” said Sana. “Get a job and take care of your kids.”
“I agree. Who’s going to protect the unborn babies? And all these low-class black females and absent fathers get free health care and free abortions. But we and our families always work hard for our chance. They want to take advantage of the system, fuck like rabbits, get pregnant, and have no moral concerns when it comes to murderi
ng their babies,” Cindy said.
Sana and her white cronies continued to disparage the black race and the black woman like it was their job. Sana spoke openly about her conservative views and proudly supported Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again movement. She laughed with her white-privilege friends, lit up another cigarette, and said to herself, This is home. This is where I was meant to be. They understand me.
And then reality came knocking at her door.
“Hey Sana,” Harlem called out to her.
Hearing that voice, Sana immediately pivoted and saw Harlem walking her way—the black Ethiopian girl with the darkest skin most people have ever seen and the ghetto name. Sana was about to panic. Her white friends gazed at Harlem in bewilderment with their mouths gaping. They all wanted to know if Sana knew this young, very black, and ghetto looking girl. Sana had a black friend—a REALLY BLACK FRIEND.
Before Harlem could get close, Sana said to her friends, “Her mother used to be my nanny, but I’ll explain it to y’all later.”
It made sense to the girls. Of course, it was normal to be kind to the help and their extended families from time to time.
Sana hurried away from the girls to keep Harlem from drawing closer. It was a nightmare that she was trying to avoid.
“What are you doing here, Harlem?” she asked.
“Did you forget? We’re going to meet with Cartier today.”
“Oh shit! I fuckin’ forgot, girl. Shit, I be having so much shit to do and on my mind lately,” she replied, flipping the switch.
“Who were those cornball lookin’ white bitches?”
“Oh, they’re just associates of mine from classes. I was using them for help with some of my schoolwork,” Sana explained.
“They all look so fuckin’ fake and corny. Them bitches probably think they’re better than everyone else,” Harlem said.
“I know, they are fake, and that’s why I’m so glad you came and got me. I was ’bout to die over there hearing their bullshit,” Sana replied.
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