The Bed You Make: An Urban Hood Drama

by Tamicka Higgins

  “Nigga, I ain’t tell you to get undressed,” John said. “I said to take all your fuckin’ clothes off. That shit mean your boxers, nigga. I know you remember that shit. Had me fuckin’ walk home and shit naked in the middle of the night. Nigga, take that shit off in front of everyone.”

  Race did as he was told, lowering his underwear to his feet and stepping out of them. Now, with his clothes in a small pile to the right of him, he stood there and looked at John. He wondered what was next. Quickly, Camron’s cousins rushed up behind Race and jumped on him. Everybody watched in terror as Race was beat to within an inch of his life by the four guys dressed in black. Women crouching down to the sides begged for it to stop, but John would only wave his gun at them to get the noise to stop.

  “Okay, okay,” John said, wanting to make sure that Race was well enough to go on the walk they’d had planned. He could see the passion in the way Camron’s cousins pummeled Race’s face. It was as if they were getting a strange pleasure from doing it, each telling Race in their own way that he shouldn’t have put their cousin in the hospital. Camron’s family loved him too much to not want revenge for his beating.

  “This one’s for my auntie,” one of Camron’s cousins yelled, and then he bitch-slapped Race—who was lying on the floor—across the face.

  John rushed over, pushing Camron’s cousins back. “Okay, okay,” he said, laughing. “Chill out, y’all. Chill out. The nigga can’t walk if he knocked out. Just chill out, niggas. Chill out.”

  Like hungry wolves who weren’t done eating, the four cousins backed up. They stretched their arms and cracked their knuckles. John looked down at Race, whose face was badly beaten with both eyes swollen shut. “Get the fuck up, nigga!” he told him, kicking his side. “Get the fuck up before I start killin’ niggas.”

  Race, having never been beaten so badly in his life, managed to stand up. He started to lose his balance, as the room was spinning and he could hardly see. Race fell over and went crashing into the very same table where he’d been sitting. John laughed and shook his head as he walked over to the table. “This nigga is fuckin’ sad,” he said. “Just sad.”

  John leaned over and slapped Race across the face. “Come on, nigga!” he said. “Now ain’t the time to take no fuckin’ nap. You gotta go on a walk. Get the fuck on up, nigga! Come on, Race. Get up, nigga!”

  Race managed to get up and keep his balance.

  “Okay!” John said, smiling. “Let’s get outside, nigga.”

  Race shook his head, not wanting to go, but the words that came out of his mouth were hard to make out. He grabbed his face, as he really couldn’t see. “Nigga, I can’t see!” he said. “I can’t fuckin’ see! Them niggas fucked my eyes up!”

  “Nigga, shut the fuck up and get the fuck outside right now before we drag that ass out there!” John demanded.

  “Fuck all this slow shit!” one of Camron’s cousins said, walking over. “Let’s get this fuckin’ nigga outside.”

  Almost working in unison, Camron’s cousins rushed over to Race. They pushed him down to the ground yet again then drug him, across the floor in front of everyone, across the club floor and out into the parking lot. They let him go on the black asphalt and stood back. At this point, people rushed over to the club door to look out at the spectacle. Naked as the day he was born, Race stood up. Rocks and twigs and other kinds of debris stuck to various parts of his body. His muscular butt was covered in dirt as he stood there, wishing that there was some mercy.

  Everyone watched as John’s boy—Judge—rushed out and pulled the car up. He hopped out with a leash and they put it around Race’s neck. Race, who was barely conscious, was trying to make some kind of sense out of what was going on. When he heard the clicking of the leash around his neck, he realized what was going on. And it was the most humiliating moment of his life.

  “Okay, nigga,” John said. “You gon’ go on a fuckin’ walk.”

  Race felt as if things could not get any worse when he turned around and saw Camron’s cousins all holding their phones out. Judge climbed into the driver’s seat as John climbed into the front passenger seat. He kept his gun pointed at Race as the car slowly rolled forward, causing the leashed Race to move so he wouldn’t get dragged.

  “Man, you ain’t gotta do all this shit!” Race said, thinking about how he must have looked to the people standing in front of the club. To him, the crazy part of the situation was that nobody had called the police yet. Not a single siren rang out into the air. Race just didn’t understand; he was so respected and so loved by everybody that it seemed simply unthinkable that nobody would try to stop what was happening and call the police.

  “Speed up!” John told Judge. At this point, Camron’s cousins were walking behind the car. They laughed and joked as they watched Race move along with the car. Judge sped up to the point where Race had to break out in bit of a jog to keep up. If John felt like it, he would yank the chain and yell, “Come on, boy!” as if Race were a dog.

  Judge made a couple of rounds around the parking lot with John dragging Race by the leash. Race continued jogging, at some points not really being able to keep up. Things were even worse because he couldn’t really see. There had been a couple of points where people watched the naked man fall to the ground and quickly get back up to he wouldn’t be pulled. All the while, Camron’s cousins recorded the entire sight with their phones.

  When Judge finally came to a stop, Race was literally exhausted from the naked laps he’d run around the parking lot. He fell into the side of the car, his ass cheeks pressing up against the back passenger-side window. Enraged, Judge hopped out and rushed around to the other side of the car. He knocked Race down to the ground, yelling, “Nigga, get yo fuckin’ ass off my car.”

  “Okay, okay,” Race said, not being able to take anymore.

  Race’s arms were spread out on the pavement; John stepped forward and stomped on his right wrist as hard as possible. Race winced, cursing, using his left hand to grab his wrist. The cracking noise had sent chills through his body. John kicked Race’s right hand to the side, then stomped on it as well. Race’s hands lay limp at his sides, both of his wrists broken. He looked up at John, his eyes full of humiliation, embarrassment, and terror.

  John leaned over. “Now you fuckin’ know how that shit feel,” he said. “You just a bitch-ass nigga, so I walked you like a bitch-ass nigga. Come back after me or my boys again and not only is we gon’ put that tape out on the internet for every fuckin’ hood to see, but we also gon’ do this shit again.” He smiled. “You know what? Next time, if there is a next time, maybe we gon’ take you walkin’, nigga, through the hood so all them niggas you be try’na act all hard and shit for can get to see the show too.”

  Just as John looked over at Camron’s cousins and Judge, shooting rang out in the parking lot. The various groups of people who had been standing at the door scattered. Some ran back into the club, taking safety anywhere they could. Others ran for their cars, causing the sound of screeching tires to rise into the air.

  “Shit, who the fuck was that?” Judge asked, ducking down.

  By this time, John had dropped the leash, leaving Race on the ground in agony. He and Judge looked around, looking for the source of the gunshot. Just as John looked out of his window, another gunshot rang out. This time it was much closer than before. Soon enough, multiple gunshots sounded off. A man was walking around the side of the building, coming from the back. He shot at Judge’s car. People screamed everywhere as John ducked down.

  “Nigga, pull off!” John yelled, his head against the doorframe of Judge’s car. “Judge, man! What you waitin’ on? Why don’t you drive off, nigga? Drive off.”

  The silence, if such a thing even existed, was deafening to John. Bullets were still flying and Judge hadn’t responded. John lifted his gun up and out of the window, shooting at the guy walking from the back of the building. While John could see the guy and what he looked like, he couldn’t say he looked familiar. Everything
was so loud and chaotic that any thought had to be processed more than usual.

  John looked over at Judge and saw his head leaning over and out of the window. Judge winced, grabbing his arm as tears rolled down his cheeks. “What the fuck?” John asked, grabbing his boy. “Judge, nigga!” Is you shot, nigga? Judge?”

  Judge looked over at John. “Nigga, I’m shot,” he said. He looked down at his arm, which bleeding profusely. Blood covered his shirt sleeve, quickly soaking it. Several more bullets flew toward the car, shattering a couple of the back windows. While Judge couldn’t really move much, John could. He ducked down as low as possible, climbing out of the car to defend himself and his friend.

  “Back the fuck up, nigga!” John yelled. He walked forward, shooting as if he were a warrior in a movie. The guy who had been shooting at them ducked behind a corner of the building. As there were now a few consecutive seconds of no gunshots, a few people made a run for it from the club door to their cars.

  John stepped back up to the car and told Judge, “Hold up, nigga. Hold up! Don’t you fuckin’ die on me or no shit like that. I’m about to get you the fuck outta here.”

  Judge, who was clearly in the worst pain of his life, looked over his boy John and nodded. “Man, just hurry up!” he said. “I don’t know how much longer I can take this shit. Just hurry up and get that nigga so we can get the fuck up outta here.”

  John looked down at Race, figuring that one of his people had probably called for backup inside. Sirens rang out into the air, and John’s heart stopped. He rushed for the side of the building, firing his gun into the darkness. After a couple of shots, he heard a loud groan and a couple of curse words slip out of someone’s mouth. Camron’s cousins had rushed over and copied him, firing at people they couldn’t see.

  “A’ight, nigga!” John yelled to Judge. “I’m comin’, I’m comin’!”

  John ran over to the car and around to the driver’s side. When he opened the door, Judge practically fell out and onto the concrete. John knew he was going to need some help. He called Camron’s cousins over, asking them to help put Judge into the backseat.

  “Man, you ain’t got time,” one of Camron’s cousins said. “Them police ‘bout to pull up, nigga! You ain’t got time to move him!”

  “Nigga, well, then, go and create a distraction!” John snapped. “You and your cousins go and keep the police busy over on the road while we slip out the back and down the alley.”

  Camron’s cousin thought about it for a moment. One helped John get Judge into the backseat while the others rushed over to the car. Once all four of the cousins met in the car, they rushed out of the parking lot and out onto the road. John watched as they disappeared down the street, and then he heard gunshots from the same direction. They must have gotten into a shootout with the cops.

  John quickly put the car into drive and made his way around the parking lot. As he headed toward the back of the building, he looked at a fallen man. Quickly, he stopped and looked out of the window and down at the man. It was a face he didn’t know, but it looked as if the man was defeated. His body lay on the concrete, clearly cold and dead.

  With gunshots blaring in the background, John whipped into the alley behind Blue Lights. He quickly turned right and headed down to the street. For the next few minutes, he zigzagged through a nearby hood to get to the other side. Since more and more police would be sweeping into the area, John thought it would be best to stay off of the main streets as much as possible. On the other hand, it was taking longer to get through the hill.

  “Don’t you die on me, nigga!” John yelled, looking back at Judge.

  “I’m not, man,” Judge said. “I’m not. Just hurry up and get me to the hospital.” He held his arm, clenching it for dear life, hoping that he wouldn’t bleed to death. He’d tried to use his shirt to stop the bleeding, but it wasn’t working. He’d already bled so much. The streetlights John drove past started to get blurry. Everything seemed to turn into a blur. Judge’s blinks were getting increasingly longer and longer. It wasn’t long before his head had slumped over and thumped against the doorframe. He mumbled, “Get me to a hospital, man. Get me to a hospital.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Exactly like when he’d pulled up to the hospital with Camron, John rushed into the parking lot. The drive to the nearest hospital had been twenty minutes—twenty long minutes that were eventually full of silence.

  “We here, man!” John announced, hopping out of the car. “We here, man! We here!” His hands moved frantically to get Judge out of the backseat. John was absolutely terrified, even more than he’d been with Camron. One of his best friends was in his arms, not breathing and not responding.

  “Come help me!” John yelled toward the Emergency Room doors. “Somebody come out here and help me!”

  When John saw that the hospital staff wasn’t paying much attention, he groaned. “Let me go get these nigga,” he said to Judge, in a soothing voice. “I’mma make sure they save you, man. Let me go get these niggas.”

  With as much caution as possible, John lay Judge back onto the backseat. He rushed into the Emergency Room and commanded the attention of the hospital staff. Only seconds passed before nurses with a stretcher came rushing out. John helped them take Judge inside, hating that this was the second time in a week he’d had to take a friend into the hospital.

  “Don’t let him die,” John pleaded to the staff. The guilt was coming over him now, taking him over. If anything happened to Judge, he’d never be able to let it go. Why wasn’t he responding? John wanted more than anything for his boy to wake up and they could all laugh about it later.

  John followed the hospital staff as they pushed Judge into the operating room. Standing outside of the double doors, John watched in horror. Because it was late at night, and the situation was so grave, the hospital staff clearly weren’t occupied with trying to push him back out to the waiting room. John watched as doctors and nurses crowded around John’s bed, hooking him up to machines. He couldn’t help but feel that things weren’t going as well as they should be. Something about the doctors and nurses and their reactions to Judge’s condition told him that this might not turn out as well as Camron. Camron was still in the hospital, having to go through surgeries, but he’d never technically been in danger of losing his life.

  “God, please,” John said, his nerves on their absolute edges. “If this nigga dies, I swear.” He thought about Race. Having two friends in the hospital because of that dude had absolutely pushed him to his limits. John thought about Imani, and how she was truly at the center of all this. “Please don’t die, nigga. We got too much to live for still, man.”

  John watched as doctors used a defibrillator on Judge. Judging by the staff’s reactions to the machine, it obviously didn’t work. The scene played over and over again right in front of John, until everything stopped. The doctor put the defibrillator away, turning to the side and taking off his gloves. Nurses backed away from the bed. Their facial expressions said it all: this was terrible but it came with the territory of being in this kind of profession.

  “No!” John yelled, his teenage memories of hanging out with one of his best friends rushing through his mind. “No. Don’t let him die! Y’all betta not let him die!”

  The doctor—a middle-aged white guy—looked out into the hallway with sad eyes. He stepped out and asked John, “Do you have a way to get in touch with this young man’s parents?”

  John, stunned, looked into the operating room. His boy Judge was really dead. He watched as the nurses pulled the white hospital bed sheet up over his face. They lowered the blinds and John turned away. A rogue tear rolled down his cheek. In so many ways, he felt guilty, felt like this was something he’d carry in his heart until his final day on this earth.

  John broke down and cried, his head bopping up and down. “Fuck!” he said, ramming his fist into the wall. “He was helpin’ me with my shit! He was fuckin’ helpin’ me and that nigga Race got him killed! Fuck! I can’t b
elieve this shit. It’s so fucked up.”

  The doctor looked on in confusion, but he couldn’t really say that he was surprised. Having worked in inner-city hospitals for years, seeing young black men come into the hospital shot was not the least bit surprising. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last.

  John sobbed against the wall for a few minutes before he got himself together and stood up straight. He managed to look into the doctor’s eyes and tell him that he’d get in touch with the family. The doctor offered his condolences, then asked that John go up to the receptionist desk to give them as much information he could about Judge. John agreed, walking toward the front of the Emergency Room. “Damn, his kids,” he said, thinking about a family event he’d gone to over at Judge’s aunt’s house. Judge had finally gotten the mothers of his children to agree on something and bring the children to see their family.

  After John gave the receptionist every bit of information he had about Judge, he simply stood for several minutes. It was all surreal. He’d seen scenes like this play out in movies and television shows over and over again. Now, to actually be living it was a different story. It was a feeling that he wouldn’t wish on anyone, no matter what they’d done to him.

  A nurse finally came along and suggested that John sit down. He declined, saying that he was going outside. As he headed toward the exit, he looked back at the hospital that led to the operating room. His soul literally sunk in his chest. He thought about how he’d wheeled his buddy back to the back, seeing him breathe for the last time.

  John sat in his car and looked blankly ahead. Ambulances whipped in off of the street, causing him to quickly pull out of the way. John zipped over to a large dumpster at the side of a parking garage. He parked his car and wiped the stray tears from his face. Then, he pulled his cell phone out, knowing that he was going to have to call Judge’s family and tell them this absolutely horrifying news. Since John had been so close with Judge’s family in various ways, he actually had a couple of their phone numbers. He would just have to figure out who he would call first, especially since Judge’s mother had gotten addicted to drugs and was M.I.A.