Memoirs of an Accidental Hustler

by J. M. Benjamin

  As we were leaving, Ant saw his brother hemmed up against the police car with handcuffs on, along with a few of the other local hustlers from our side of the projects.

  “Man, my mom is gonna kill Terrance when she finds out they caught him again,” Ant cried. “This is the second time this month he’s been in the youth house.”

  That’s what they called the juvenile detention center for anybody under the age of eighteen years. It was a type of jail for young people that held you until you were released to the custody of your parents by the judge. All the guys Kamal and I hung with, except for Ant, had already been there at least once, and they bragged about it as if were a fun place to be or it made you cool.

  Speaking of the youth house, if the plainclothes officer knew what I had in my pocket, I would’ve been right alongside Terrance and the rest of them, handcuffed and on my way to the detention center. My mother would’ve killed me if that had happened. She wouldn’t have understood the position I was in at the time. I knew my dad would have, though. It was either take what Mustafa handed me and do exactly what I did with it, drop it and let the cops find it, or hand it to them. If I didn’t take it then I would’ve been looked at as a sucka by my friends; if I would’ve dropped it and somebody saw me I would’ve been looked at as a coward; and if I would’ve given it to the police then I would’ve been looked at as a snitch. Even though I knew I had no business accepting what Mustafa had given me to hold, I knew I didn’t want to be labeled as a sucka, coward, or snitch.

  We all went our separate ways, slapping one another five. I couldn’t wait to tell Kamal what Mustafa had given me back there. No one had seen him give it to me. I really didn’t know what it was myself, but I was curious to find out.

  I took a glance back to make sure our boys were out of range before I spoke. They were already up the rocks and on the tracks, crossing back over. “Mal, guess what?” I said, looking around to see if anyone else could hear me.

  “What up, Mil?”

  “Yo, when Mu ran past us in the field he tossed me something and told me to hold it,” I said, waiting for his reaction.

  “What? What is you talkin’ about?”

  “You heard me. Mu tossed me something to hold when we were back there in the field playing football.”

  “And you took it?”

  “What was I supposed to do? He was runnin’. I couldn’t catch up to him and say, ‘No, I can’t hold this, take it back.’ And I couldn’t turn it over to the cops ’cause that would’ve been snitchin’, and I don’t want no rep like that ’cause nobody respects a snitch or rat.”

  “Where you learn that at?” Mal asked.

  “I heard Dad say it one time when him and Uncle Jerry was in the living room talking. Trev and them said it a few times too when they be talking about the youth house.”

  “Yeah, you right. I remember. And, plus, Mom and Dad taught us to always mind our business. We don’t see nothin’, we don’t hear nothin’, and we don’t know nothin’. Yo, whatever you got don’t pull it out here, though. Wait until we get in the house; and make sure you act normal when we get in there ’cause Grandma ain’t slow. She’s from the old school and she’ll know somethin’s up.”

  My brother had said a mouthful. My grandmother was as sharp as they came. For someone who never really left the house she always knew everything about everything. Whenever she would be talking to my mom, or one of her friends who came over or called on the phone, she would always start out by saying, “It’s not any of my business, but you know so-and-so did this,” or “Such-and-such happened to so-and-so.” There wasn’t anything that you could do or say without my grandmother not catching wind of it.

  “I’m not, and I know Grandma be on point,” I agreed with my brother.

  “You boys are back early. Is everything all right?” my grandmother greeted us as soon as we walked through the door and passed the kitchen. We could smell what she was cooking the moment we entered the building. No one’s fried chicken smelled better than my grandmother’s.

  “Some boys got chased and the police broke up the game,” Kamal answered for us.

  My grandmother just shook her head. We prepared for the “I told you” speech but surprisingly it didn’t come. I made my way to our room as Mal followed.

  “Did you lock the door behind you?” I asked Mal as I pulled the plastic sandwich bag out of my pocket.

  “Yeah, it’s locked, boy. Stop being so paranoid like you used some of that stuff already,” Kamal whispered back.

  I shot him a look that made him know that I thought he was talking out of the side of his neck, saying something like that.

  When I opened the plastic bag, I saw it contained a bunch of tiny little balloons, some red and some blue. Thirty-five reds and fifteen blues, to be exact. “What the heck is this?” I said aloud, surprised to be seeing balloons instead of drugs.

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Kamal. “It’s drugs. The drugs are in the balloons, goofy.”

  “How do you know?” I asked curiously.

  “Because I used to hear the guys out there hustling, yellin’, ‘I got that Boy and Girl,’ and then I’d see the fiends lined up to spend their money in exchange for the balloons. I asked Ant what were Boy and Girl, and he told me that his brother told him that Boy, in the blue balloons, was dope, and Girl, in the red ones, was coke, and that the Boys go for five dollars and the Girls go for ten.”

  “So you mean to tell me that these little balloons are worth four hundred twenty-five dollars?” I asked my brother as I calculated the value in my head, which was easy to do because math was my strongest subject in school, as well as my favorite.

  “Yep,” Mal replied.

  “Dag! Mu must be rich if he got it like that.”

  “Man, that ain’t nothing. They be out there with more than that on ’em. Put all that stuff back in the bag and tie it back the way it was before you opened it,” Mal told me. “Tomorrow, as soon as you see Mustafa, we gonna give him that stuff back; and I don’t want to hear about it again,” Kamal demanded.

  “I’m with you on that, bro. I don’t want no part of this either,” I agreed.

  The next morning, before Kamal and I went off to school, we looked for Mustafa, but he was nowhere to be found. Out of fear of Moms or Grandmother finding the package in the house, I took it to school with me. Here I was, just turned ten years old last month, in school with over $400 worth of drugs in my pocket, not able to do any schoolwork, waiting for class to let out so I could get back around the projects and give Mustafa his stuff.

  At 2:45 school let out and I waited for Mal out front.

  “Yo, you a’ight, bro? You look like you about to pass out,” Mal said to me.

  “Man, this stuff been drivin’ me crazy all day being in my pocket. I don’t know how they do it, standin’ out there like that around the way, ’cause I feel like Five-O gonna run down on me any minute now. I wonder if Dad had to go through this when he was our age,” I stated to my brother.

  “I wish he were here. Then we could’ve gone to him for help, ’cause if Moms found out she’d flip out and probably try to keep us in the house until we turned twenty-one.”

  “You got that right,” said Mal.

  As we turned the corner, approaching the projects, I heard my name. “Ay yo, li’l Mil!”

  When I turned around to look, I saw Mustafa rolling down the black-tinted window of a pearl black BMW 318i with gold rims, and a gold front grill to match. You could tell it was brand new, because it still had the dealer temp tags in the back window.

  “Yo, get in,” he leaned over toward the passenger’s side and shouted. “I wanna talk to you for a minute. Li’l Mal, you too.” He gestured to him.

  Mal and I both knew what he wanted to talk about, but we still were a little nervous about getting in the car with him. We knew if our moms, our grandmother, or someone who knew them saw us getting in this car we’d be in serious trouble. I looked both ways to make sure the coast was clear
then walked over to the passenger’s front door and hesitantly opened it to get in the front seat, as Kamal opened the back door and hopped in.

  When we closed the doors, Mustafa drove off to the sounds of the latest Run-D.M.C. cut, “Here We Go,” rolling the tinted window back up. This was the first time I’d actually ever been in a drug dealer’s car, but being in the car with Mustafa felt like being in any other, ordinary person’s ride, with the exception of his appearance.

  When we got in, the inside of the Beemer smelled like Mu had just come from the barbershop. His sharp chin-strapped line and goatee confirmed it. As he drove, I tried not to stare, but I couldn’t help it. He was sharp from head to toe. On his left hand, he had a two-finger gold ring with a dollar sign on it that covered his pinky and ring fingers. He had two separate rings on his middle and pointer fingers; one had an M and the other had a U. On his right hand, he had a four-finger ring on, with lion heads on both sides, with red rubies in their eyes. I could see the name MUSTAFA in between them, on the plate of the ring. Around his neck, he had three different sizes of gold rope chains, with medallions on them. He wore a pair of silk pants with a silk shirt to match, only the shirt was yellow, and the pants were black. To top it off, he rocked a yellow and black beanie with a tassel dangling from it and he had on the black and yellow British Walkers. Everything he had on matched and coincided with his ride. I was in awe.

  The sound of his voice snapped me out of my daze. “Yo, remember yesterday when I ran past you?” he stated rather than asked as he lowered the volume of his music.

  I tried to answer, but instead I was only able to nod. I wasn’t afraid, but I was nervous. I had never been so nervous in my life. Maybe because I knew what I had done was wrong and I knew the consequences behind my actions. I just wanted it all to be over.

  “What did you do with that?” Mustafa asked in a cool tone.

  “I got it right here, just the way you gave it to me, Mu. And I didn’t tell anybody. Well, except for my brother, but he didn’t tell anybody,” I rambled.

  “Relax, Mil. I believe you, and I’m not gonna hurt you, either, so chill,” he said with a grin on his face.

  “Okay.” It wasn’t so much what he said, but how he looked when he said it that put me at ease.

  “Yo, Big Jay ya pops, right?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I answered, never hearing anyone refer to my dad as “Big Jay” before; but I knew they called him Jay, which was short for Jayson.

  “Your pops is a good man, so I knew the apple didn’t fall far from the tree,” Mu said. I was too young to understand what he meant by the statement. He must’ve remembered that he was talking to a couple of kids, because he broke it down so Mal and I could understand. “What I mean is, I figured you were just like your pops,” he rephrased his comment. “That’s why I trusted you like that with my stash.”

  All I could say was, “Thanks,” not really knowing whether what he had just said required a response. But out of politeness I responded to what I believed was a compliment.

  “Li’l Mil, stay the way you are and you’ll go far in this world,” he told me. “’Cause a man is measured by three things in life.” His tone changed. It became smoother, but serious. “And that’s his loyalty, respect and, most importantly, his money,” he quoted as if he read the lines straight out of some philosophical book.

  Then he pulled out a knot of money filled with nothing but hundreds, bigger than both of my hands put together. My eyes grew wide. It looked as if it could’ve been over $10,000. I noticed that he didn’t have any twenties, tens, fives, or singles in his bankroll, as he peeled off two hundred-dollar bills and gave one to me and one to Kamal, saying, “This is for you, for holding it down, and this one is for you, Kamal, for havin’ your brother’s back. Always hold each other down, no matter what,” he told us as he took the sandwich bag from me. “And stay away from this,” he said in a much sterner tone, holding the bag in the air. “’Cause this shit will kill you! You understand?”

  Mal and I both nodded yes.

  Mustafa pulled over, up the street from the projects, and let us out by the vegetable garden on the corner of West Second and Liberty Street.

  Just as he was about to pull off, he rolled down his window. “If either one of you ever needs anything, just let me know.”

  Then the words of Whodini’s latest cut, “Friends,” flowed out of his sunroof and filled the air as he pulled off. From that day on, I had a different outlook on drug dealers.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Two Years Later

  “Hey, Kamil.”

  I heard my name sung in unison as I unchained my bike from the bike rack while waiting for my brother to come and do the same. For getting good grades last year, Mustafa bought Mal and me matching Diamondback bikes. Mine was light blue, because blue was my favorite color, and Kamal’s was light green. They both came with the white pegs on the front and back. The only thing wrong with the bikes was that we couldn’t keep them at home because we’d get questioned and then killed by both our moms and our grandmother, so we had to leave them over at Ant’s crib because his moms was cool.

  After that day in the car, Mustafa had been making sure Mal and I always had a couple of dollars in our pockets. He always asked us how we were doing in school and rewarded us when we got good grades on tests and report cards. When some of our boys passed to go on to the seventh grade, the middle school they would have normally attended was changed. The city decided to send the kids from the Elmwood Gardens housing projects to Maxson Middle School on the east end, which was on the opposite side of the town, and let the kids from the West End Gardens housing projects to stay at Hubbard, due to all neighborhood rivalry fights that took place on school property. I guessed they didn’t think about the saying, “You can take the person out of the projects, but you can’t take the projects out of the person,” because while the beefs decreased at the west end middle school, they increased on the east end.

  Before school even started my boys were already saying how they didn’t like the kids up there and how they were punks because they lived on the east end and the kids up there were either intimidated, afraid, or just didn’t like us just because we lived in the projects. The east end was considered to be the better and quieter part of town while the west end was referred to as the bad and ghetto part of town. I had heard enough stories from my friends to know that once I got there I’d be considered just another kid from the projects.

  I turned around to see who was speaking to me. I was greeted with three bright smiles. I recognized them, but one stood out above all.

  “Hey, what up?” I responded, as the darkest one of the three girls and I made eye contact.

  Lisa was her name. Lisa Goodman. She was in a few of my classes. All three girls were from the east end of town. Because they lived borderline, they attended the elementary we did.

  “Go ahead. Ask him.” The lighter of the three, named Felicia, nudged Lisa with her shoulder as they giggled.

  “Okay!” Lisa exclaimed.

  “Ask me what?” I was curious.

  “We’re having a pool party after graduation is over and school lets out, and we wanted to know if you and your brother would like to come, seeing as how today is the last day of school and we might not see each other again until the summer’s over.”

  Today was the last day of school until September, and tonight was graduation for those who were moving on from elementary school to junior high; and Mal and I were among the graduates. Kamal was supposed to have graduated the year before, but he was left back a grade. Everyone thought he let his grades drop just to stay another year with me, because of how close we were, but I knew the real reason was that he had gotten lazy and slacked off on his studying. He knew too, and he was reminded of it every time he looked in the mirror and saw the welts on his back from the extension cord my moms had nearly beaten him half to death with.

  “I don’t know, shorty, I gotta check with my brother and see what he thi
nks,” I told her.

  “Does everybody from New York use the word ‘shorty’?” asked Felicia.

  All I could do was laugh because all of the girls in the neighborhood had been asking me that. I had recently started using it since going back to Brooklyn to visit some of my cousins. They were all saying it so I brought it back to Jersey with me.

  “Okay, kid, I see you surrounded by three of the finest shorties in the school,” shouted Kamal as he walked up on us.

  “What’s up, Kamal?” Felicia flashed the same smile at my brother that she had at me when they first walked up. “We were just inviting you and Kamil to a pool party that we are having to celebrate the end of the school year, and graduation from elementary school to junior high, since we’re going to Maxson in September.”

  “Shorty, no offense, but you know we don’t hang on the east like that,” Mal said as nice as possible.

  “Technically you’re not from the east or the west end,” Lisa spoke up.

  “You’re from another state, so why should it matter what part of town it’s on, as long as you’re enjoying yourself and having a good time?” Felicia stated.

  “Right, right, true, true,” was all Mal said. That was his way of trying to be funny, so I stepped up and said something.

  “Give us the time, place, and date, and if we can, we’ll try to make it, but if we can’t then we apologize for not being able to.” I directed my words to Lisa.

  She smiled. It didn’t take a genius to figure out she liked me. She kept staring at me before taking out a pen and a piece of paper and writing everything down, including her phone number. “Please call if you can’t make it,” she said.

  “I will.”

  All three of them waved as they walked off; but as they got a few feet up, Lisa turned around and flashed one last smile. And I smiled back.