by K'wan
Jonas wasn’t sure if he was more relieved at the fact that he hadn’t killed Black, as he’d thought, or that he narrowly escaped going to jail for a very long time. Either way, he knew that things in his life were changing. For the better or worse, he was still unsure, but he wouldn’t have to wait very long find out.
“Jonas, do you hear me talking to you?” Janette snapped him out of his daze.
“What?” Jonas asked a little sharper than he had meant to.
“You better watch your tone. I said we’re almost home,” Janette repeated. Jonas had been so lost in his thoughts he hadn’t even realized they were nearing his block. “Where is your head these days, boy?”
“I got stuff on my mind,” he said dismissively.
“Like what? This shit you’ve let Ace get you tied up into?”
“I told you and the police, I don’t know anything about it,” he lied.
“Bullshit! You and that damn Ace are like Mutt and Jeff. One don’t move without the other. Now, I would hope that you weren’t stupid enough to have had anything to do with this, but if you did, I’d advise you to keep your fucking mouth shut and make sure Ace does the same,” Janette told him.
“Ace is solid.”
“Listen to you trying to sound like you know some shit about some shit. Boy, you have no idea how big of a pile of shit you have stepped in. This ain’t no petty fight in school that Mommy can get you out of. This is attempted murder. Do you have any idea what that means?” Janette asked. She didn’t wait for him to answer. “It means, you could go to prison.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Jonas repeated his lie.
“You didn’t have to. If the police can so much as prove that you were in that room, it’d be enough to charge you as an accessory and send you away for a long time. Is that what you want? To spend the next few years of your life in prison?”
“Can’t be no worse than where I’m at now,” he said.
“Wow! Am I that bad of a mother to where you’d prefer jail over being around me?” Janette said in a hurt tone. The remark stung. “I’ll admit, I could’ve probably been better to you kids growing up, but I tried to do the best I could with what I had to work with. Sure, I’ve got my vices. I’ll be the first to admit to that, but not a one of you can ever say you went to bed hungry or to school without clean clothes on your back.”
“You think feeding us and clothing us is all it takes to be a parent?” Jonas asked her.
“No, but it’s more than what some got. I see kids out here every day get swallowed up by these streets, and I say to myself, not mine. My kids will be better. And then something like this happens. Do you remember that day you almost drowned in that lake?”
“Yeah.”
“When it happened, I blamed myself,” Janette admitted.
“How? You weren’t even there.”
“I don’t mean directly. I mean, what happened to you was a result of how I live. God was punishing me for all the shit I’ve done in my life by taking the thing I love the most, my precious baby boy,” she said emotionally. “When I was on my way to the hospital, I did something that I haven’t done in a long time. I prayed. I got on my knees and told God that if he let you live, I would get my shit together.”
“Guess your prayers were answered because I’m still here.”
“Yes, he held up his end of the bargain, but I didn’t hold up mine. I tried to get it together for a little while; staying in the house and trying to keep myself busy, but I slipped. Then I slipped again. Before I knew it, I was right back to it. Because of that, God is trying to take you again.”
“Ma, what are you talking about?” Jonas didn’t understand.
“I’m talking about the streets,” Janette explained. “You think I don’t see that look in your eyes lately? The way you’re hanging out a little more and coming home a little later.”
“I just be chilling with my friends,” Jonas said.
“Don’t give me that, boy. I’m your mama. I can see the change in you. I know you hear that call, same as I did when I started running around out here all crazy. I don’t want my life for you, Jonas. I couldn’t take it if I got that call telling me that were dead, or if you had to go away over some bullshit.”
“That ain’t gonna happen to me,” he assured her.
“That’s the same thing your father said, but he’s gone,” Janette replied emotionally.
When Jonas looked over at his mother, he could’ve sworn he saw tears dancing in the corners of her eyes. This was a side of his mother he wasn’t used to seeing. She seemed so . . . vulnerable. Almost frail. He wanted to reach out to her. Everything in him wanted to take his mother in his arms and promise her that he wouldn’t die in the streets, but he didn’t. Instead, he posed a question. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?” Janette wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.
“What Slick said earlier, about my father swallowing a bullet? Did he really kill himself?”
Janette studied her son’s face for a time as if she were trying to decide how best to answer his question. “Slick is a bitter old man and tends to talk out of his ass when he’s in his feelings.”
“So, he was lying?”
“Your father was a good man, Jonas, but he was also very troubled. There were things broken inside him that I’m not even sure he knew how to fix. Instead of us, together as a family, facing whatever demons were riding him, he sought help elsewhere, and that was his undoing. It’s wrong to speak ill of the dead, so that’s all I’ll say about that.”
Jonas didn’t miss out on the fact that she hadn’t given him a direct answer. There was obviously more to it, but that was a mystery that he would have to unravel on his own.
“Jonas,” she began speaking again, “I know that as a young man, you will have to choose your own path. I should hope that you do the right thing with your life, but at the end of the day, it’s your decision. I may not like it, but I understand. The only thing that I ask is that whatever road you decide to follow, it will be on your own terms.”
“Ma—”
“I need your word,” she cut him off. “I need to know that you will always be your own man and never let someone make you their puppet. Promise me!”
“I promise,” he quickly agreed. There was something in his mother’s words that made him uneasy. She sounded like she knew something that he didn’t, and whatever it was, it scared her.
The last few blocks of their taxi ride were spent in silence, with Jonas weighing the conversation with his mother. She stared out the window, lost in her own world. Occasionally, he noticed her wiping her nose with a crumpled piece of tissue. He knew what that meant. She hadn’t had a fix.
When the cab turned onto their block, Jonas noticed a small gathering of people in front of his building. Among them were Jewels, Anette, and Sweets. Sweets was crying, and Drew was trying to console her. Jonas’s heart sank as he immediately thought the worst. Was it Yvette? Had something finally happened to his sister? Jonas was out of the car before it had come to a complete stop.
“What’s going on?” Jonas rushed to the group. His heart was thudding in his chest. Sweets said something, but she was sobbing so heavily that he couldn’t understand her. Had something finally happened to Yvette? “Is it Yvette? Did something happen to my sister?”
“Yvette is fine. She’s upstairs with Jo-Jo,” Anette spoke up. Her eyes were red, and he could tell she had been crying too.
He breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t think he could’ve taken it if something had happened to one of his sisters. “If nothing happened to Yvette, why are y’all all out here looking so sad?” Everyone got quiet. None of the girls had the heart to tell him, so Drew accepted the responsibility. With four words, he changed the course of Jonas’s life.
“Your friend is gone.”
Chapter Fourteen
The days leading up to the funeral were some of the hardest of Jonas’s life. When Drew had broken the news to him, he comp
letely blanked out. His mind went elsewhere, and when it finally came back, he was on his knees in the middle of the street wailing like a banshee. It took the combined efforts of his mother, Drew, and both of his sisters to get him up and into the house. His mother had given him something to help him sleep. He woke up the next afternoon, hoping that it had all been a bad dream, but when he went outside to get some air and saw the candles lit in front of the building, he knew that it hadn’t been. Doug was indeed dead.
He had a hard time wrapping his mind around it. Doug was one of them, just a kid out having fun and trying to make it in the world. He had never done anything to anybody, but someone had taken his life, and Jonas couldn’t understand why. It wouldn’t be until later that night when Ace came to see him that the blanks would be filled in.
Jonas had been out on his stoop catching a breeze. He hadn’t planned on going outside, but Slick and his mom were in the crib arguing. With the mood Jonas was in, he didn’t trust himself to stay out of it, and if it went down, his mother wouldn’t be able to stop him from killing Slick this time. For the sake of keeping the peace, he just left and went to sit on the steps.
While he sat there, trying to get his head together, people kept approaching him, offering their condolences. Most of it went in one ear and out the other. None of their empty words nor their pats on the back could take away the sense of loss inside him or bring his friend Doug back. Only death could answer for death.
Ace appeared, seemingly from the shadows. He was garbed in a black hoodie, jeans, and Timbs. He walked close to the buildings, hands tucked in the pocket of his hoodie. A newspaper was tucked under his arm. Jonas hadn’t seen much of him since word got out that the police were looking for him in connection with the attack at the motel. The block was too hot, so he moved his operation to Brooklyn. He had been lying low at his cousin’s house in Marcy Projects. He hated staying in Brooklyn, but it beat prison.
“Sup?” Ace gave him dap and took a seat on the step next to him. Jonas nodded. “You, a’ight?”
“Not really,” Jonas said honestly. “I still can’t believe Doug is gone.”
“Me either. That’s was my nigga . . . gave me a play when nobody else would.” Ace recalled Doug plugging him with the weed connect.
“Good dude who died over some bullshit. Who could’ve done this to him?”
“We did,” Ace said sadly, then went on to give Jonas the rundown on what he had discovered. Word of what had happened to Black spread quickly. Everybody was talking about it, including members of Black’s crew. They didn’t know all the details, but that would change thanks to Brian. Just as Jonas had suspected, Brian betrayed them. He told the crew all about the plan to get back at Black for what he did to Doug but conveniently omitted the part he played. “They caught him coming out of some chick’s building and aired him out. Doug never even saw it coming.”
“Damn.” Jonas put his head in his hands. Mr. Hightower’s warning continuing the cycle of bullshit came back to haunt him. “If we had left it alone, Doug might still be alive.”
“I thought about that too. Been losing a lot of sleep over it, but ain’t much we can do about it now. What’s gone is done,” Ace said.
“I knew that nigga Brian was foul! I wish I knew where to find him. I’d kill that muthafucka!” Jonas fumed.
“Funny thing about Karma. She never leaves debts unpaid.” Ace opened the newspaper and handed it to Jonas.
Jonas skimmed over an article about a broad daylight shooting inside of the McDonald’s on 125th and Broadway. At first, Jonas didn’t understand, but then it hit him. He looked at Ace in wide-eyed shock.
Ace smiled. “We take care of our own.”
Earlier that day . . .
When Brian walked into McDonald’s, he was tired, sore, and starving. All he’d had to eat in the last few days was a hero sandwich, which had worn off quickly. The bullshit food they offered in the vending machines at the Harlem hospital wasn’t worth shit. He had spent the night there, thanks to an unexpected ass whipping he picked up the night before. He had never realized how hard a project hallway floor was until his head bounced off one. He was in bad shape, but it beat the alternative. Instead of hungry with a broken nose, he could’ve been dead and stinking. The worst part is that he had only himself to blame.
A dark cloud descended over the General Grant housing project when word got back about what had happened to Black. Black wasn’t the most well-liked person in the neighborhood, but he was respected. His small corner of the project fed a half-dozen hungry mouths and taking him out of the game threatened how they ate. Whoever was behind removing the food from their plate would have to answer for it. It hadn’t taken them long to shake Brian’s name loose from a hat. He was the one thread that could connect all the pieces.
He had to admit that when he had given Ace and his boys the information about where to find Black, he had no idea they would go as far as they did. He had never intended on going with them to jump Black, but it sounded good and helped grease the wheel when he tried to talk Ace out of a few extra dollars in exchange for the info. At best, he expected them to jump Black and go back to their block with a story to tell, and he’d have a few dollars, but these kids had gone the extra mile and tried to kill him. He had seriously underestimated the ruthlessness of Doug’s friends.
When Brian heard that Flair, who was Black’s second in command, was looking to talk to him, he immediately got out of Dodge. He had been hiding out at his dad’s apartment in Lincoln Project, only slipping in and out of Grant in the wee hours of the morning when he was sure no one was outside. The only reason he even risked that is because his mother had been sick, and he needed to check in on her from time to time. That was how he had gotten caught.
Brian had just got done checking on his mom, making sure she had her medicine and everything she needed for the day and was about to head back to his dad’s. Taking the elevator put him at risk of bumping into one of Black’s crew, so he took the stairs, which proved to be a mistake. He ended up running right into Flair.
Black was a big dude, but he looked small standing next to Flair. He was only 18, but already had a full beard and thick arms that were covered in tattoos. Flair didn’t see him at first because he had his eyes closed. One of the neighborhood crackheads was in the process of giving him a blow job. Brian swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to ease back the way he came as quietly as possible. He had almost made it—when he stepped on a discarded potato chip bag and gave himself away. When Flair’s eyes landed on Brian, a stream of piss squirted down Brian’s leg.
“Move, bitch.” Flair shoved the fiend off him and yanked his pants up. Brian tried to run, but Flair already had a handful of his shirt. “Where you off to?”
“Come on, man, chill,” Brian pleaded.
“Relax. I just wanna talk to you.” Flair smiled . . . before punching Brian in the face. He whipped Brian’s ass for a good three minutes. In those three minutes, Brian told Flair everything he knew; the revenge plot for what happened to Doug, Ace setting it up. He even told him what he’d had for breakfast that morning. The only thing that stopped Flair from killing Brian was the old woman coming out of her apartment on her way to work. When she threatened to call the police, Flair ran off and left Brian to lick his wounds.
As Brian stood in line waiting for the girl with the blond braids to bring him his order, he couldn’t help but think about Doug. A part of him felt bad about how he had to play it. In hindsight, Doug was a pretty decent dude, but he wasn’t cut out for the game. He was too trusting. If he hadn’t been, then he would’ve realized that Brian was only doing what was in his nature . . . to cross him. Brian looked up at the dollar menu, thinking about what Flair and his boys would do with the information he had provided. He hoped they caught Ace first and beat his ass. He never liked Ace. But at that point, Brian still had no idea of what he had set in motion. However, he would soon find out.
Brian had just grabbed his two breakfast sausag
es from the counter and was on his way out . . . when the front door swung open. It took his brain about two seconds to register the gun pointed in his face, but three and a half to recognize the person holding it. “I—” he opened his mouth to say something, and a bullet flew into it and out the back of his head, splattering blood and brain all over the shocked cashier. People screamed and rushed for the doors.
“What you see, bitch?” Mula asked, pointing the Glock. 40 at the frightened cashier.
“Nothing,” she managed to whimper.
“That’s what I thought.” Mula shoved the gun into his pants and strolled casually from the eatery.
* * *
Long after Ace had gone, Jonas continued sitting on the stoop. He took some comfort in knowing that Mula had murdered Brian. He just wished he could’ve been there to see it. He had never much cared for Ace’s strange little sidekick. Mula was too wild and unpredictable. He was an accident waiting to happen. But one thing that he proved to be was loyal. He had a newfound respect for Mula and intended to tell him as much when next their paths crossed.
It started getting late, so Jonas decided it was time to go back into the house. When he got to his floor, he was surprised to find Jewels sitting on the steps. When she saw him, she flashed an uncertain smile. Jewels had tried to visit him that morning, but Jonas didn’t feel like talking, so he had Sweets send her away. Jonas knew that Jewels had become dependent on him, almost like a puppy, so the slight had to have hurt. Jewels had been there for him when he was grieving over Doug, and he felt bad for the way he had treated her.