by Brick
“You better stop fuckin’ with that nigga like that,” Gina fussed. “I told you he was fuckin’ sick in the head. You see how he killed Dough Boy? That boy don’t care. And you don’t say that shit about his mama, ever. I be hearing shit ’cuz niggas talk around me. His mama died in a fucked-up way.”
“I don’t care. He ain’t gon’ be calling me bitches and getting away with it.”
“The longer you stay in this damn house, the more that’s gonna start sounding like yo’ name and shit. Bitch, ho, slut, stupid, cunt, fuck toy, dicksucka—and whatever the fuck else they feel like calling you—get used to it.”
“That nigga don’t scare me, Gina.”
“It ain’t about being scared of him. You betta get smart and listen to what I tell you. Trigga and Big Jake the only niggas in here that look out for me. They the only niggas that ain’t tried to shove their dicks in every hole I own. The only ones that call me Gina, or Baby G, or doll face, or any sweet shit. Trigga ain’t ever call me bitch. Big Jake ain’t ever called me ho. You gotta form alliances where you can, Ray-Ray. You still think shit is game.”
Since I had been in the house, I’d never heard Gina’s voice so stern and commanding. Then I saw her wipe tears from her eyes and knew she was reliving all the shit that had happened to her in here. I guess she was trying to tell me it was better to have Trigga as my ally than my enemy. I didn’t know, but I hugged her anyway. I didn’t want to see her crying.
The next day the house was quiet. Dame was calm mostly. He had me sit in the office with him as he tried to get Trigga to help him figure out how to make up for the product and money they had lost behind what my parents had done. Part of me only felt as if he had me there to hurt me.
“Should have known that fuckin’ bitch was up to something,” Dame fussed, talking about my mama. “One thing you never do, Trigga, is trust a bitch sucking your dick and holding eye contact.” He then laughed. “But then again, Shanna was the queen of sucking dick, so you can see how a nigga may have slipped up.”
I swallowed and felt my throat closing with emotions. My eyes darted around the room and then to Trigga from time to time, but mostly stayed on Trigga.
The top right side of my upper lip twitched. I pictured myself picking up the golden letter-opener and stabbing Dame dead in his fuckin’ throat.
Gina was out of the house. Dame had made her go back to Magic City to dance. She didn’t put up a fuss or fight. She didn’t say a lot to me, and when she kissed me, it was only a peck, not her usual tongue-down. I thought she was still mad at me.
“I wish I knew where her bitch-ass daddy hid the rest of my shit. That damn product came straight from muthafuckin’ Vietnam and Colombia.” Dame thumbed his nose.
I didn’t think I would ever be used to him talking shit about my mama and daddy like that. One day he would pay for it.
I’d seen him test the product he was fussing about earlier. That shit had hit his brain instantly, mellowed him out enough to have him eating my pussy. He sprinkled some of that shit on my clit and had me bucking and jerking like crazy. I hate to admit it, but his lips and tongue on my pussy felt good. Damn good.
For the first time, I moaned out in pleasure with him. And for the first time he fucked me slow. I didn’t know how to look at myself afterwards, since I enjoyed it.
“So whatchu gon’ do ’bout it, boss?” Trigga asked him. “We done already searched they crib left to right, top to bottom.”
“Searched all the spots they used to lay low in too?” Dame asked.
Trigga nodded. “Nothing.”
“Damn.”
Dame stood and then walked over to open the balcony doors that sat right behind his desk. Cool air breezed in and whisked through my hair. I hadn’t been outside in so long, I started to feel like a caged animal. As soon as the doors opened, I wanted to run and jump over the balcony.
“I think them niggas had another person in on that hit, bossman. When I ran into them other two niggas jawing, they said something else a nigga wasn’t able to hear.”
I looked up at Trigga when he said that, and it finally dawned on me. Pookie was still alive because they didn’t know he was in on it. I knew where the stash was hidden, but I wouldn’t say anything just yet. Pookie was stupid. I knew he wouldn’t have moved it. Judging by how silent that nigga had been, he was too scared to risk it. It was a good thing I had sliced his fuckin’ face.
“If I find out another muthafucka was in on this shit, and I’ma fuckin’ cut out his entrails and hang them around his parents’ house to dry. Sick of niggas playing with my shit, my fuckin’ emotions. You know how much fuckin’ dough I done missed out on because of this shit?”
Before Trigga could respond, Big Jake pushed the door open. “Boss, you betta get downstairs. Sasha done cut one of the new bitches,” he told Dame.
“I’m so sick of this bitch!” Dame roared as he picked up his cane and stormed from the office.
I halfway wanted to run down there just to see him fuck her up.
“It was Pookie,” I said aloud when it was just me and Trigga in the room.
He regarded me slowly. “What, li’l shawty?”
“The other nigga in on the take . . . it was Pookie.”
“And you telling me this why?”
“So you can tell Dame.”
“Why you ain’t telling ’im?”
“’Because he told me to stay the fuck out his business.”
“How you know it was Pookie?”
“He was with my mama and my daddy the night they did it. Him, Janky, and Slammer, they was all in on it. Came in the house scared and nervous but was talking ’bout how they had just come up. It was duffle bags full of bricks wrapped in brown kind of duct tape. There was money too.”
I could tell when I told him about the money I had his interest. Nobody had mentioned the money that Dame had been robbed of too.
“How long you been sitting on this shit, li’l shawty?”
“Since I got here.”
Trigga stood and folded his arms across his wide chest. As usual he had a black hoodie on.
“So where is it?”
“The old trap house on Campbellton Road. The other half is at the house on Washington Road, at Janky and Slammer’s grandma’s house.”
“So them niggas hid the shit in plain sight?”
“Guess so. That’s where it’s at though.”
“You bet not be playing a nigga, li’l shawty. If I check this shit out, and you bullshitting—”
“I ain’t bullshitting. It’s there.”
I guess I was feeling bad because Gina had told me some niggas raped his mama before killing her. I had too much pride to say sorry to the nigga, but I could pass him info. She’d also told me he was real young when his mama got killed. She even said she thought he had seen what happened to her when the niggas raped her. I hoped not. Nobody should have to see that shit.
“Why you kill people, Trigga?” I asked him. “Didn’t you see your mama and daddy die? Why you kill people like you do?”
He didn’t break a sweat. “Why you sucking Dame dick? Didn’t you see your mama was your daddy’s ho? Why you doing what you doing now? Why you ain’t fighting and cutting niggas up no more?”
“So he kidnapped you and made you work for him too?”
“A nigga got debt just like you do, li’l shawty.”
Sasha’s screams rent the house. Her cries, begs, and pleas for Dame not to send her to the basement made my flesh crawl. I still shuddered to think about what would have happened to me if I had gone down there.
“Just don’t see why you wanna work for a nigga that got the initials DOA carved in his bedposts, headboard, and back,” I mumbled.
Trigga’s face turned down in a frown.
“What you say? Say that shit again?”
It was almost like he was demanding it. He moved closer to me so quickly, I didn’t have time to think. I thought he was bucking on me because I’d dissed Dame in his
presence.
I leaned back in my chair as he glared down at me. “I ain’t say nothing.”
“Yeah, you did. What about DOA?”
“All I said was, he has it carved in his bedposts, headboard, and back,” I stammered.
“Yeah.”
Something had changed in his eyes. I could see it just like I could feel his mood change in the room.
Trigga
There was some shit I wasn’t honest about at the start of all this bullshit and li’l shawty’s words brought all of that to the surface. Rumors on the street were that I’d seen my parents get popped. As a kid I used to walk around and tell niggas that, when they got too nosy. That shit was lies. Some I told that they OD’d on some product. Others, I added that with the rape story of my moms before I got quiet altogether and silenced my story. No one was able to tell what my backstory was, and on some real shit, it was better that way. The more niggas knew about your business, the easier it was to get your weakness.
For me, the truth was in all the jawin’ going on. My parents did get popped the way I told you. Thing was, I saw everything. I ain’t just walked in on my mom getting ran through then helped her take those niggas down. No. I was locked in the house for the week they used my mom like their personal bitch. Watched as they tied and gagged her, beat her, made her open her legs by tying them apart, and they ran through her, flipping her to eat her out taking their dirty shirts to wipe her blood and their come away.
Yeah, I saw it all, except that last nigga, the one who got away. I couldn’t get free to help my mom until she signaled me. Shit still was in a nigga’s dreams every day. Every day I woke up thinking about that last nigga with the DOA tat on his back.
I stood in the middle of the hallway looking at nothing. A blank expression settled in my eyes, and for the first time in my life, in a long time, a nigga wasn’t tracking shit. I heard, saw, felt, and smelled nothing.
Ray-Ray’s voice finally broke through to my dome, when her hand reached out to shake me.
“Trigga! You straight tripping and acting like a stupid nigga now. Trigga! Wake up!” she screamed at me.
Had I been checkin’ for her, like actually seeing her, I would have seen that she was staring at me confused, kinda pissed, not sure about why the fuck I was flipping out, and also trying to keep the other niggas from hearing me.
The sensation of her nails digging in my skin as she shook and gripped my arm had me turning around and snatching her by her throat. I lifted her so high in the air, her feet started dangling as she struggled and tried to kick me. Like, a nigga wasn’t himself at all.
That nigga Dame was in my head laughing, over and over. All I saw was his fuckin’ face in her, and I slammed her hard against the hall wall. Kept slamming her, until her screams cut through to me.
“You a lying-ass bitch! You lyin’!” I growled then yelled at her, not seeing nothing. I literally saw blackness. Darkness. She wasn’t there. It was those niggas that used my mom like a fuck toy.
My fist smashed into the wall, causing pictures to fall. I squeezed Ray-Ray’s throat.
She croaked out, “I can show you. I ain’t lying. Let me go, Trigga, please!”
Her pleas sounded like my mom, and it fucked me up further. My mom had told me to stay hiding, and I did. Damn! I fuckin’ did.
Ray-Ray continued clawing at my hands, cutting them to where they bled, but I didn’t feel a damn thing. A nigga was all the way numb, but I heard her repeating that she could show me that she wasn’t lying, so I let go of her throat.
The sound of her falling to the floor like a sack of potatoes had me finally seeing her for the first time. My locks swung around me as I shook my head, and I balled both of my fists and bowed my head in shame. I wanted to say sorry, but fuck! What could a nigga say about choking a shawty up like some scum-ass bitch?
So instead of saying, “My bad,” my priority—no, my obsession—became seeing the proof of what she said. Anger had me heated, which made me point down the hall. “Show me,” I commanded.
Ray-Ray’s eyes darted nervously at my Glock, which I held in my hand. Yeah, if what she said was true, a nigga was damn sure going to use it.
She quickly took me to Dame’s room, a place I never had stepped into. The moment I did, I wished I had never done so. Shit felt like my personal gateway to hell once I saw DOA carved in his headboard. Blood seemed to suddenly spill from each letter.
The sound of my pops being capped then the grunts and wet thrusts of the niggas digging my momma out echoed in my head. I heard her screams through her gagged mouth. She screamed in a way that said, “Stay hiding.”
I remember seeing her on that bed looking at me with unshed tears. Tears she’d never let fall for these niggas, tears she only let slide down her battered face once she looked into my eyes.
In that moment, shit for me changed just that fast. I turned to walk out the room and zoned the fuck out. Everything was like a tunnel for me. I heard Ray-Ray running behind me and trying to stop me, but it wasn’t working. She fell, being dragged by me as I walked on.
She screamed for Big Jake, who must have been coming up the steps. I didn’t see him, and I didn’t give a damn if I did. In that moment, homie or not, he could have gotten the taste of my fist in his mouth. I just needed to get out of this place, needed to find that nigga Dame.
Pushing through the hallway, it took Big Jake snatching me by my throat then wrapping his arm tight around it, locking me in a choke hold to keep me in place. My fist connected to his face, but he squeezed tighter, causing me to grind my teeth. A nigga was gone. I was ready to take my life and hand it to Dame, just to take his fuckin’ ass out, and all I saw on rewind was that nigga over my momma, punching her, laughing his signature laugh, and flipping her to sit her pussy on his face, exposing the DOA tat on his back.
I swear to fuckin’ God I was going to end him. His blood was mine. And all this time, like a stupid-ass nigga, I was working for my own enemy, getting close?
I struggled again against Big Jake. Does this nigga know who the fuck I am? Is he playing me this whole time, making me work for him ’cuz the shit is funny? Yo, if his pops wasn’t already dead, that nigga would get it too.
I had learned in the streets that his pops had put a hit out on my pops, because some kid my pops had helped ended up in the pen then tried to take him out, using my pops’ name as the reason for it. Nigga lied.
My pops worked the streets as an activist to stop all this bullshit in the streets, ’cuz he came from the same type of bullshit in Brooklyn. So Dame’s punk-ass father was hating it. And he was even more upset that one of my pops’ street kids had actually got in the pen and almost took him out. Yeah, now that nigga was eating dirt, and Dame was king of DOA. Bullshit!
The sound of doors closing and darkness surrounding me let me know Big Jake had taken us to our private spot in the house. He dragged me and yelled at Ray-Ray to turn on the lights. My mind flipped on rewind again. I needed to be let go right the fuck now.
“No, Trig, man, he’s not here. He’s with Anika, a’ight. Anika sent a car for him. That crazy bitch Sasha cut up some new trick, so she’s sittin’ in the basement now too.” Big Jake tried to get me to chill the fuck out, but it wasn’t working.
“A’ight, so let me go to find that muthafucka!”
“Bro, listen to me. It’s not that time yet, trust me. Every nigga in this house gotta agenda, and now, Trig, a nigga I call my brother, my blood, you do too. You’re smarter than this, homie,” Big Jake’s voice quietly muttered next to my ear.
I realized that I must have been shouting out everything I was thinking, and that shit had a nigga feeling crazy.
The sound of a door opening then locking, mixed with the click of heels and scent of sugar and bubble gum, let me know that Gina was in the room and back from shaking her pussy at Magic City. A part of me wanted to cap those niggas too for having her underage pussy up in there. Her soft gasp, then the jingle of her purse hitting the ground, se
emed to fuck with me too.
“Big Jake, let Trigga go right now. You don’t do that. That’s not nice. Let him go.”
Gina moved to tug on Big Jake’s massive arm, but Ray-Ray pulled her back to stop her.
“Gina, chill. Trigga is on some other shit,” Ray-Ray whispered.
I heard her tell Gina everything, and before I knew it, Gina was sobbing like a baby.
Every nigga had a sob story, and mine was blowing up in my face.
Big Jake’s words came at me again as he tried to get me to stop bucking at him. No lie, I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that he was right. That just that fast, with the truth of everything, I almost lost my throne. Something Pops said never do. Not unless I want to.
The reality of that all settled in, and I stopped fighting. I lifted my hands in the air so that my guns would fall to the floor. Big Jake cautiously let me go and pushed down on my shoulders to sit me down.
Never in my life had I seen Big Jake look the way he did as he sat in front of me. His usually brown eyes were dark as sin. It almost looked as if the nigga wanted to cry while he sat back on his hunches.
That moment shook me up. I had never had another person care for me since my parents and Mama Lupe. Every person who cared for me had died, and I had stopped caring about them. Now Big Jake was sitting here looking like a nigga who had just lost the only thing that was keeping him grounded in the game, and I can’t lie, a nigga felt like shit about it all.
My eyes darted left and right like a crazy nigga, trying to find a way to escape, even as my brain woke up, telling me to get back on my nigga shit. It literally slapped a nigga, telling me that I had one of baddest killas outside of me on my side, and not the nigga who called himself king of this house. I had the respect with true loyalty, and now I was punking out. I needed to get my shit in line.
“You don’t want to do this shit, Trig, man, trust me . . . not yet. You remember everything you told me, homie? Remember how we talked about having plan B? About just getting by to get by? Listen, for real listen, bro, every nigga gotta agenda, remember I told you that? Just told you that again. Answer me.” Big Jake shook my shoulders then pulled his own Glock on me, pressing it against my temple.