by A'zayler
“Call that nigga and tell him to hurry up then. I’m ready to get away from out here.” Auto looked up and down the block that he and I stood on every weekend.
“You know better than that.”
Auto sucked his teeth. “Shit, nigga, you need to do something. It’s boring as hell out here, and I’m ready to go home. Shit is slow as hell.”
That, I agreed with. We’d been on our corner all day and had only made a little over one hundred dollars. Something had to give. I had shit to handle, and that chump change wasn’t going to help get it done.
“How long he said he was gon’ be when you last talked to him?”
I chuckled at how annoyed Auto sounded. “Nigga, go home if you have to. I’m good.”
Auto’s head immediately shook. “Nope. That’s how niggas get caught slipping. As soon as I move, somebody might run up on your ass.” He tapped my shoulder. “It’s power in numbers.”
I nodded and pulled my vibrating phone out of my pocket. “Master, what’s good?”
I listened to him tell me he was around the corner and would be pulling up in a few minutes before hanging up.
“You can go now. He about to pull up.”
Auto blew out the smoke from his blunt and kept nodding his head to the music that wasn’t playing. It was completely quiet outside, but he was bobbing his head as if there as a surround sound speaker system behind us. Typical Auto. He was always doing that weird shit. Not that I could talk; I was the exact same way. Me and that nigga spent too much time together because we did all the same shit.
“There his punk ass go.” Auto turned and dapped me up while taking steps back.
I watched him get in his red old school car and crank up. He didn’t move right away, which didn’t surprise me. He didn’t trust Master and fucked with me heavy, so he was gon’ chill until he was sure everything was good. To speed things along, I walked to the passenger side door of Master’s truck and pulled it open. I was shocked as hell to see a girl riding shotgun. She was a pretty li’l joint but looked dirty as hell. I looked right over her.
“How everything looking?” he inquired about the drugs I hadn’t been able to sell all day.
“Could be better.” I nodded subtly toward the chick.
He might have trusted her, but I didn’t know her ass, so I wasn’t saying shit. Master smiled mischievously before he reached over and grabbed her thigh. She gave him a million-dollar smile, and I’ll be damned if this dirty ass bitch didn’t look even better than she had before. Too bad she was checking for my boss. I might have slid my number to her, so she could top me off every so often, but now she couldn’t even do that. She was too fucking raggedy looking for anything outside of dick sucking.
“Dream, this one of my young soldiers. He’s cool people. Hop out and let him take you home.”
My face frowned like hell. I knew like fuck this muthafucka didn’t just pawn this dusty ass girl off on me.
“Aye Master, I’m about to slide off into something real quick.” I tried to free myself.
“She don’t stay far. Just do me this one solid. You know I got you on the back end.”
I looked at this fool like he was crazy. He knew better than anybody that I didn’t fuck off with women like that. None of them hoes was gon’ set me up and have me getting jacked by some niggas looking for a come up.
“I can walk,” she spoke up. “I don’t need nobody to take me nowhere. I’m grown.”
Damn, her slick mouth caught my attention. I ain’t say shit, though. I stood there waiting on Master to handle her first; she was his hoe.
“What I just tell you at the hotel?” Master didn’t raise his voice, but I could tell by the look on his face that whatever he’d told her had her shook.
Instead of coming crazy again, she took a few deep breaths and nodded before looking at me. I watched her look me up and down like she wanted to say something, and, on my mama, if she did, I was smacking the shit out of her. I wasn’t one of those niggas who had a problem hitting women. I’d break her whole face in half.
“Fuck you looking at me so hard for?” She was irritating the hell out of me. Staring like she had a reason to be mad with me.
She sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes before jumping out of the truck, bumping into me in the process.
“You better watch where the fuck you going,” I said to her back because she’d already started walking away.
Master’s laughter made me look at his stupid ass. “Chill out. She’s one of my girls, so that makes her family.”
I sneered at this fool. Nobody in these streets was my family. Auto was as far as that family shit went. Anybody else could get capped, including Master and his new hoe.
“Just make sure she gets home straight.”
“Yeah,” I told him before closing his truck door.
When I got back to where I’d been standing on the sidewalk, she was there waiting. Her arms were crossed, and she was looking away from me. Her attitude was visible and very fucking mutual. I didn’t want to be bothered with her any more than she wanted to be bothered with me.
Instead of saying anything to her, I walked to my car and hit the starter. It roared to life before we even got to it. Auto had been waiting for me but beeped his horn and drove off once he saw that I was good. When I got to the driver’s side of my car, I looked back at her.
“Bring your ass on.”
Her neck rolled in the most ghetto fabulous way ever as she turned to face me. “Boy, you better chill with all that attitude.”
“Boy?” I asked indignantly. “Who the fuck you calling boy? You better watch your damn mouth before you be walking.”
“Nigga, I’ll walk. I don’t want to get in that old ass car anyway. Shit might break down at any given moment.”
Oh, this bitch was clowning. I hopped in my car and swerved right off on her. Let her ungrateful ass walk. She had the right nigga. Master could bow down to her, but he nor any other nigga who lived and died the same way I did would ever make me do anything I didn’t feel like doing. That was on my mama. I would forever be my own man; nobody could change that… at least that’s what I’d thought.
A few circles around the block, and I was headed back in her direction. Even though that hoe had pissed me off, my mama had raised me better than to be that rude to a woman. She would have knocked my head clean off if she had the strength to. She was bed bound because of cancer, and it was slowly draining all the life from her. It hurt me to my heart to see my girl going down like that, which is why I’d been staying gone a lot.
It was a fucked-up way to be, but I couldn’t take it. My father, my sister, and I have been with her around the clock, making sure she’s never alone, but anytime I could jet, I was out of there. There was absolutely nothing in me that would allow me to sit there and watch my mama, the one who had given me life, fight just to take a breath. Every time something went wrong with her, I felt like it was me. I would literally get physically sick, and I just couldn’t handle it. I’d rather not see it at all. Out of sight, out of mind worked just fine for me.
Anticipating her death was ruining me. The fact that I missed her so much and she wasn’t even gone yet made me into a different person. The desire to make her proud weighed on most of my decisions, and I ended up doing things that the streets didn’t deserve.
The Egypt my mama raised wasn’t the Egypt that I showed the hood. These fools would never take my kindness for weakness and end up leaving me with the short end of the stick. I gave what they gave, maybe even a little less, but sometimes I still fell weak to her good character. Hopefully, this ride home wouldn’t hurt.
“Aye,” I yelled to the dusty girl. I’d already forgotten her name so I couldn’t yell that.
She kept walking like she didn’t hear me. I sucked my teeth but pulled my car over to the side of the street. I shouldn’t have yelled at her like that anyway. That wasn’t the way women deserved to be treated. After one or two exhales, I walked up to her and gr
abbed her arm. Like the ignorant hoe that she was, she snatched away, making me mad again. Here I was trying to be nice, and she still wanted to act stupid. My temper was too short for that type of shit.
“You want me to take you home or not?”
“Not. Didn’t you just leave me?”
I let her arm go and stuck my hands in my pockets. “I’ma leave you again if you keep this shit up.”
She stopped walking and looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “I’m not about to keep fighting with you.”
“Don’t.”
She waited a minute, looking up and down the street for a second before walking past me and going toward my car. I watched her to see if she would she get in without me telling her to. When she stopped at the door, I joined her. We were in and rolling down the road with neither of us saying anything. My ringing phone broke the silence. When I saw my sister’s number, my heart stopped.
Ever since my mother had been sick, whenever Logan or my father called, it always took my nerve. I never knew what they were calling to tell me, and to be honest, I wasn’t ready for it. I stared at her name on my phone screen for a little too long because the girl yelled.
“Watch out!”
I had to swerve to avoid the parked car that I was about to rear end. I’d obviously drifted off the road. I looked at her and sat up in my seat.
“My fault,” I said too low for her to hear because my phone was ringing again.
I could feel her looking at me, but I didn’t make eye contact. My heart was really beating like crazy now. Logan wasn’t the type to blow you up. She’d call once and wait for you to call her back, so for her to be calling me a second time only meant one thing.
“You’re not going to answer that?”
I finally looked at her. Probably looking scared as hell. If my face looked anything like how I felt, I was sure she could see the fear.
“I… umm, I don’t really want to.” I sighed heavily and looked back out at the road. “But I need to. It’s my sister.”
“Why don’t you want to answer for your sister? What’s wrong?” She turned in her seat and faced me. “Why you breathing so hard?” She touched my arm, and I looked back at her.
“My mama has cancer.”
I knew that didn’t offer her much, but that was all I could say. My mother and any word that described her death couldn’t go in the same sentence. It definitely wasn’t about to come out of my mouth.
“You want me to talk to her and see what’s going on for you?”
I nodded in a hurry and extended my phone to the stranger who I was in desperate need of right then. God really worked in mysterious ways because as much as I hadn’t wanted to give her a ride home, I’d needed to. I started sweating, moving, swallowing hard, and a bunch of other stuff that I thought was helping me control myself but really wasn’t.
“Hello, hey… um, my name is Aza-Dream. I’m a friend of your brother. He asked me to check in with you and make sure everything is okay.”
I felt like I was about to explode as I tried to sit there and wait for Logan to tell Dream whatever was going on. She was holding the phone and nodding every so often, not giving anything away, which was making my anxiety worse. I needed her to gasp… cry… something. I could barely move as I waited for her to get off the phone.
“Okay, I’ll let him know.” She paused and rubbed her leg. “We’re in the car. He was about to take me home. Sure. Of course, okay. Bye.”
I had just pulled up to a red light when Dream ruined my life forever.
When she grabbed my arm again, I knew. “Logan said that your mother had been having a pretty peaceful night, so after giving her a bath and putting her to bed, she went to take a shower herself.” Her grip tightened on my arm, and my throat got tight. “When she got out, your mother was unresponsive. She passed away in her sleep about ten minutes ago.”
My entire life left me in that second. I literally didn’t know what to do with myself. I wanted to yell, I wanted to scream, I wanted to hit something. I needed to hit something. After throwing my car in park, I hopped out and grabbed my head. With two handfuls of my hair, I fell to the ground. On my knees, I tried to think of what I was going to do on an earth that my mother no longer existed in.
That just wasn’t possible. She was everything to me. What was I going to do? Who was I going to be? I yelled out my pain in the middle of the street. Luckily, it was black dark in the wee hours of the morning, and no one was out to interrupt my breakdown in the middle of the road.
When I’d yelled and screamed as much as I could and couldn’t think of anything else to do, I jumped from the ground and stood next to my car. I looked around wildly, but when I saw nothing, I punched my rear window. Glass shot everywhere. When that wasn’t enough to take the pain away, I punched straight through the front one too. My hand was dripping blood, but it still didn’t ease the pain.
Helpless, with nothing else to ease my pain, I slammed my head into the side of the car. I did it again, and prepared to do it again, but was stopped.
“Move!” I yelled at Dream as she wedged her body in front of mine to prevent me from hitting my head again. “Get the fuck out of my way!” I went to grab her, but she grabbed me first and held me so that I couldn’t.
Her small body hung tightly around my neck as she rubbed the back of my head. “I know it hurts.” She rubbed and hugged, and rubbed and hugged until I fell loosely in her arms and resumed my crying.
It felt like I’d been crying forever as she hugged me with patience. There was nothing urgent about her touch or the compassion she’d delivered, and I was so thankful for it. I needed the world to stop and feel my pain. Everyone and everything needed to feel as bad as I felt at that moment.
“Come on, let’s go to your house.”
“I can’t see her.” I shook my head. “I don’t want to see her like that.”
Dream touched the side of my face. “You have to. It’ll make it easier.”
As much as I didn’t want to, I did want to. I wanted to see her, touch her, smell her just one more time. So, versus continuing to fight Dream for trying to help me, I listened to her. Once I’d wasted enough time brushing glass off my seat, I got in and sped to my crib. When I got there, the house looked quiet. There were no extra cars there except Auto’s, and his was pretty regular around our house.
“You want me to come in with you or wait for you out here?” Dream questioned me as I sat in the driveway staring at the house that I’d grown up in.
“Get out.”
Neither of us said anything else as we walked up the driveway. I felt like I was walking the green mile as slow as I was moving. My feet had to have turned into cement because they were hard as hell to pick up and move. So hard, that I had to look down and make sure the only thing on my feet were the sneakers I’d had on all day. Aside from the small splatters of newly placed blood, they were just like they’d been.
Gotdamn, not my mama, man. My head fell forward as soon as I opened the screen door and smelled the inside of my home. I could hear soft talking coming from the back of the house as Dream and I walked through the living room. My chest felt weird as fuck the closer I got to her room. Like I was about to stop breathing or some shit. I looked over at Dream like she could stop it from happening. She was right there looking back at me.
“I can’t breathe.” I grabbed my chest. “I think I’m about to pass out.”
Dream grabbed my hand and held it. She didn’t tell me one way or the other whether I was going to pass out or not, so I assumed I wasn’t. Still in the lead, my pace slowed some as we approached my mother’s room. I saw Auto first. He was leaning on the wall next to the chair my sister was sitting in. When he saw me, his face dropped a little more than it had been. He nodded once but didn’t say anything.
Logan was next. She was seated in the chair with her head leaning on Auto’s thigh. Her eyes were swollen, and her entire face was red. Thanks to my mama, Logan and I were both extremely ligh
t skinned. Damn. Thinking about my queen made my knees that much weaker. Afraid to look at her, I walked into the room but walked straight to my sister.
She hopped up and hugged me as soon as she saw me. Of course, I fell out like a fucking baby. Crying on her shoulder like she could make it all go away.
“She’s free now, Egypt. No more pain, sorrows, or cares.” She pulled away and looked over at the bed where my mother was. I didn’t. I just kept looking at her. “She’s finally with the king in the best place she could ever be.” Logan’s tears began again as she smiled. “I’m so happy for her. She’s where we’re all striving to be. Her race is over.” Logan patted my back again.
I was frowning like hell because I didn’t want to hear none of that spiritual shit my sister was talking. She was just like my fucking mama. Always wanting to see the good in shit. How could she possibly be happy for her? She was dead. Fucking lifeless and floating around in who knows where, and Logan was happy for her? The fuck kind of shit was that?
“Look at her, Egypt. She looks so peaceful.” Logan was rubbing my back while still looking at my mother’s bed.
I could see my father out of my peripheral. He was lying next to her on the bed, not crying, but he definitely looked like he was going through it. Hell, how could he not? He and my mother had been together well over thirty years. She was just as much him as he was. Being with a person that long, there was no way not to grow into each other.
“Hello, beautiful. Are you Dream?” My sister leaned in front of me and grabbed Dream’s hand.
“Yes, I’m sorry about your loss.”
Logan pulled her in for a hug. “Thank you so much for being with him.”
I stood there and listened to them talk but felt like I was in the room by myself. It was weird because I could see everyone and hear them, but I felt like all I could feel was my mother, or the lack thereof.