Carl Weber's Kingpins

by Treasure Hernandez

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.” She heard the doors unlock, and she got out of the taxi.

  The driver rolled down the passenger-side window. “Young lady, don’t you forget He will be the only one to get you through this struggle.”

  “I won’t. Thank you again for your kindness.” Camilla wiped her face and started toward her mother’s building.

  It was a walk she had never thought she would have to do, since she was with Kafis. Camilla was thankful that the taxi driver had let her off the hook when it came to the fare, but if the driver hadn’t let her out of the taxi, she would’ve cried rape, and he himself would have needed God to get him through his test. She chuckled. Camilla reached her mother’s building and pushed the apartment buzzer.

  “Who this?” a harsh voice answered.

  “It’s Camilla, Yvonne’s daughter. Let me in.”

  “Cam? What you doing here?” The last time Camilla had been called by that name was over fifteen years ago.

  “Can you let me in so I can tell you, Mama?” She waited, not knowing if her mother would buzz her in. After waiting in silence for a minute, she figured her mother was not going to let her in. As she turned around to leave, the door buzzed, surprising Camilla. “Thank God,” she mumbled to herself. She still didn’t know what to expect when she reached her mother’s door.

  She stepped into the elevator and tried to hold her breath all the way up to the fifth floor. The urine smell was something she would never forget. When the elevator chimed on the designated floor, she rushed out into the hallway, gasping for air. Unfortunately, she had forgotten that the stench was even worse on the fifth floor. Camilla quickly walked to her mother’s apartment and noticed that the door was already open.

  “Mama?” she called out as she tapped on the door.

  “Come on in and shut the door,” Yvonne instructed, sucking her teeth in the process.

  Camilla did as she was told. After all, she was there on the humble.

  “Now, come have a seat over here and tell me why you have abruptly shown up here after all this time.” Yvonne lit one of her Newport 100s.

  Camilla was surprised to see what her mother looked like after all these years. Her face looked older than sixty, and she was far from sixty. Camilla didn’t know what to think when she spotted her mother’s needle works on the stained coffee table. When she was younger, she had never noticed her mother’s drug habit. Yvonne had hid it very well. She anticipated the conversation she was about to have with her obviously drug-addicted mother, who had no shame.

  “So what happened? He done left you? He caught you with someone else? You married that wannabe nigga, didn’t you? Where my grandchild at? I would like to see her before I die.” Yvonne blew smoke into the air.

  Camilla tried not to blow up at her mother for her blatant verbal assault. She sat down but remained silent.

  “What? You can’t talk now? I want to know why you’re here, Cam.” Yvonne puffed away on her cigarette.

  “Mama, I need a place to stay until I can return to Kafis. If you want, I will give you a couple of hundred dollars once I return home. That’s on my word. I just need a place to stay until everything settles down.” She hated to beg her mother.

  “You left one thing out. Where is my grandchild?”

  “I left her with Kafis.”

  “You did what? You stupid little bitch. Are you out yo’ mind? It don’t matter what that man has done. You always take yo’ child. How else you gonna get benefits?”

  Camilla wanted to pose those very same questions to her mother, but she knew she wouldn’t get an honest answer. Instead, she closed her eyes and tilted her head back, questioning why she had ever thought of coming back here. This was a mistake she was going to pay for with her life, she feared, as she was unaware of her new surroundings. Much had changed in the projects. The hustlers, pimps, and hoes were now only an arm’s length away, with no shame to their game. They flaunted their products for sale out in the open. There was no hiding them anymore. Suddenly everybody was now a moneymaker and shaker, no matter what the hustle was.

  “Are you gonna answer my question, Cam, or have you zoned out on some other shit?”

  Camilla opened her eyes and looked at her mother. “Can I stay here or what, Mama?”

  “You got money?”

  “No.”

  Yvonne shook her head. “Stupid, just stupid. Of course you would leave without a plan and leave your only responsibility in life.”

  Camilla had had enough of her mother’s hurtful words. It was time for her to answer the same questions. “Mama, was I not your only responsibility in your life? What did you allow to happen to me? Why did I leave, Mama? Why?” Camilla stood up.

  Yvonne looked at her with the nastiest stink eye ever. Camilla’s questions went unanswered, mostly out of shame.

  “Are you gonna let me stay or not?” Camilla folded her arms across her chest, fuming with anger.

  “Yeah, but you better find yourself down at social services bright and early tomorrow morning, ’cause ain’t no way I’ma let you stay here for free. You better tell them yo’ baby father done left you alone to care for your child and he set all your shit on fire. They should give you emergency benefits if you say the right words, and you better, ’cause if you show back up here with no money, you gonna have to sell yo’ ass to get some, just like what you did with my old boyfriends.”

  Camilla wanted to smack fire out her own mother’s mouth, but she held back and started walking toward her old room.

  “Where you think you going?” Yvonne asked.

  “My old room,” Camilla snapped.

  “Bitch, that ain’t yo’ room no more. You gave that shit up when you walked up out this house. You can sleep right on that sofa.”

  Camilla looked at the stained, ripped-up old sofa. It was amazing that Yvonne had not purchased a new one in all this time. The cushions were so flat, it was as if she would be sleeping on plywood. She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “I need a key.”

  “No, you don’t. I’m always home.” Yvonne lit another Newport 100.

  “So you gonna make me give you money and not give me a key to go and come as I please?”

  “Yup!” Yvonne was quick to answer.

  “Well, if you expect money to support yo’ habit, then I expect a key and my old room back.”

  “Really?”

  “Think about it.” Camilla walked toward the front door. She thought if she sat out front, she would be able to see what was going down in the hood. Once she was outside, she sat on the bench that was nearest to the building, scoping out the scenery before her.

  Before long a cute young man approached. “Hey, ma. You tryin’ to holla? I got that mean green.”

  She smiled at the fact that he had approached her, giving her the feeling that she still had it. She knew it wasn’t because he wanted to sell to her.

  “You smoking with me?” she asked, trying her charm.

  “If you rolling, I am smokin’ fo’ sho’, sweetie.”

  “You is if you stayin’,” she cooed. “Where the wrap?”

  “I got one right here. Here you go.” The young man pulled a pack of Backwoods out of his back jeans pocket.

  After she rolled the blunt, they both sat, talked, and smoked. After a while she knew he was feeling her. Now was the chance to see what Marcy had turned into after she left.

  Chapter Two

  Two years later ...

  The blue and yellow flames of the stove’s eye caused the pot of water to reach a boil. Twelve-year-old Kafisa Jackson watched as her father lowered the Gerber baby food jar into the pot of boiling water. The jar contained fourteen grams of some of Colombia’s purest cocaine mixed with Arm & Hammer baking soda and seven grams of lactose.

  “You see that?” Her father pointed to the little bit of residue that floated atop the water in the Gerber jar. “That’s no good. If it floats to the top, it’s not coke.” He grabbed hold of the Gerber jar with
an oven mitt and began making a circular motion with his wrist. “Hand me two ice cubes.”

  Kafisa did as she was told. She scurried over to the sink. She snatched up two pieces of ice from the bag sitting in the kitchen sink and handed them to him. She watched as her father dropped one of the ice cubes into the Gerber jar.

  “Look.” He gestured for Kafisa to come closer to see what was taking place in the jar as he continued to shake it. “All of that is the coke. You see how it’s coming together?”

  Kafisa nodded. She peered into the jar. She saw that what had once been liquid was becoming a solid piece.

  “Come on, baby. Come together for Daddy,” her father said to the drugs. “Listen to this,” he told her.

  Kafis dropped the second ice cube. The motion in her father’s wrist increased. Kafisa turned her head to the side. She listened attentively, even though she had no idea what she was listening for. Then she heard and witnessed the solid piece of cocaine clinking against the inside of the jar.

  “There she goes!” her father exclaimed, referring to the drug. “Yeah, this a good batch right here.”

  He went over to the sink and drained the water out of the Gerber jar, then walked over to the kitchen table, where the remainder of the half kilo sat. Kafisa watched as he dumped the powdered-cocaine-turned-rock onto the newspaper on the kitchen table. Once it had dried out, Kafis put the grams of base on the triple beam scale. A grin appeared on his face. His initial fourteen grams of powdered cocaine had turned into twenty-one grams of rock cocaine.

  He turned to Kafisa and said, “They gonna love this in the streets, baby girl.”

  Kafisa smiled.

  “Were you watching?” Kafis asked his daughter.

  Kafisa shook her head.

  It was Kafis’s turn to smile. “Good.” He pulled out the chair from underneath the table. “Come here,” he instructed Kafisa. He patted the chair’s cushion. “Sit.”

  Kafisa sat in the chair. Kafis pushed her closer to the table. This was the first time her father had allowed her to sit at his worktable. Kafisa stared at the items before her. She had seen them many times, but they looked different now that she was sitting in front of them and not looking at them from her father’s lap. Since her mother had left, her father had been introducing her to a lot of his street business and teaching her more about the game. She was eager to learn whatever her father was willing to show her. Kafis placed his hands on Kafisa’s shoulders.

  “Put one of those masks and the gloves on.”

  Kafisa did as she was told.

  “I don’t want you catching a contact from the fumes or getting it in your pores through your fingers. This shit is dangerous!” Kafis warned. “Promise me, you’ll never try this. I don’t ever wanna hear you’re using this junk. You hear me?” His tone was stern.

  Kafisa nodded to indicate she understood. She could tell her dad meant what he had said. His eyebrows always turned into a unibrow whenever he was serious about something.

  “Okay.” Kafis returned to his calm self. “What I’m about to show you, people pay for. Hopefully, you’ll never have to use any of the things I’ve shown you, but in this cruel world, you never know.” He kissed her on top of her head. “Now, I want you to take one of those pieces out of that bag and put it on that plate.” Kafis pointed to the Ziploc bag containing chunks of powdered cocaine.

  Kafisa unzipped the plastic bag. She grabbed a chunk of the drug and removed it from the bag.

  “Now put it on there,” Kafis instructed.

  Kafisa took the coke and put it on the scale. She watched as the needle on the triple beam fluttered from left to right until it stopped.

  “Okay, take the razor and shave off the extra grams,” Kafis continued. “Make sure you—”

  “I got it, Daddy,” Kafisa said, cutting her father off.

  Kafis smiled proudly. He threw up his hands in submission.

  Kafisa removed the seventeen-gram chunk of powdered cocaine from the scale and then picked up the Gemstar single-edge razor. She angled the razor over top of the chunk of coke. She pressed the razor gently into the product, then angled it back and pressed down harder. A small piece of the coke detached from the compressed chunk. Kafisa took the main chunk and put it back on the scale. The needle repeated itself. It fluctuated between the numbers thirteen and fourteen until it finally stopped.

  “Good girl.” Kafis rubbed the top of Kafisa’s head.

  Kafis felt like she had just scored an A+ on a major test. Her father’s reaction to her weighing up the half ounce of coke fueled her eagerness to please him. She retrieved one of the small Ziploc bags from the box to the right of her. Kafisa put the chunk of coke in the bag and set it on the table. She closed her eyes and sat there for a second. She envisioned her father doing what she had watched him do so many times. Once she saw in her mind’s eye what she needed to see, Kafisa snatched up the bag with the half ounce of coke and pushed the kitchen chair back. She made her way over to the stove.

  Kafis watched in admiration as Kafisa poured the coke into the water inside the Gerber jar, followed by the baking soda and lactose. Kafisa set the Gerber jar in the pot of boiling water. She peered into the boiling pot and watched as particles began to float to the top of the jar and most of the powdered mixture dissolved and became liquid.

  “Daddy, hand me two ice cubes,” Kafisa requested without bothering to look back. She was focused on the Gerber jar.

  Kafis smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Seconds later, Kafisa was moving her wrist in a circular fashion, just as she had seen her father do. She began to nod as the second ice cube she dropped into the jar caused the liquid to solidify. Kafisa’s wrist motion increased. A huge grin appeared on her face when she heard the rock cocaine clink against the jar.

  “I did it, Daddy!” she exclaimed.

  Kafis stood there with his arms folded and nodded proudly. “Yes, you did, baby. But you’re not done yet,” he reminded her.

  Kafisa made her way over to the sink and drained the water out of the jar. She then dumped the rock, which resembled a white chocolate cookie, on the newspaper on the table. She looked from the drugs to her father. She could tell she was impressing him. She was eager to find out how well she’d done. Did I bring the cocaine back to its original weight or gain additional grams? she thought. She knew that if she’d done everything correctly, there would be additional grams. She wanted to make her father proud.

  Satisfied with the amount of time she had let the product dry, Kafisa made sure the triple beam scale was level before placing the rock cocaine on it. The needle began to glide across the top of the numbers. Both Kafisa and Kafis watched as it passed the line that represented fourteen. Kafisa beamed as the needle approached the twenty line. Kafis smirked as it passed twenty-one and landed on twenty-two.

  Kafisa realized immediately that the drugs she had just cooked up for the first time weighed more than the grams her father had cooked up. “I beat you, Daddy.” She flashed a cheesy grin.

  “Yes, you beat me, baby.” Kafis shook his head.

  The average person would consider him a monster and an unfit parent for what he had just shown Kafisa, but in his eyes, he had just given his daughter a gift that would and could take care of her for the rest of her life if anything were ever to happen to him or if they ever lost everything. For the past two years, he had taken on the role of both parents in the absence of Camilla. He had raised Kafisa the way he felt she needed to be raised, and no one could tell him different. She was getting older, and Kafis knew that pretty soon he would have to let her leave the nest and spread her wings. He wanted to make sure that her wings were the strongest they could be, in case of an emergency.

  “Come here.” Kafis opened his arms.

  Kafisa fell into her father’s embrace. She never felt safer than she did when she was in her father’s arms.

  “Never forget what I taught you.” He kissed Kafisa on the top of her head.

  “I won’t,
” she promised.

  She knew she wouldn’t. Everything he had ever taught her was embedded in her young memory bank. There was no doubt in her mind that someday she would have to utilize some, if not all, of the things her father had shown her, and when the time came, she would be ready.

  She looked up at her father. “I love you, Daddy.” She smiled.

  “I know. I love you too, baby.” Kafis Jackson returned his daughter’s smile.

  That was all Kafisa needed to see and hear. She hugged her father as tight as she could, then closed her eyes, knowing he was the only parent she had. Her mother had been out of her life now for two years without a word, and she hadn’t even shown up to visit. How could a mother stay away from her only child? Kafisa wondered. After questioning her mother’s actions for only a minute or so, Kafisa concentrated on the only real parent she had. Her father meant more to her more now than he did when her mother was around.

  Chapter Three

  Spring 2005 . . .

  On any other beautiful day, Kafisa would be out enjoying the Columbia, South Carolina, weather, but instead, she stood in a Brooklyn cemetery and watched as the pallbearers lowered a casket containing what was left of her mother’s toxic body into the open hole in the ground. Kafisa took the white rose given to her by one of the caretakers and tossed it onto the coffin. She watched as it slowly traveled downward. She stood among thirty or so sobbing strangers, who offered their condolences to her every chance they got during the funeral services. Some had introduced themselves as relatives, but she felt no family connection to any of them. As far as she was concerned, they were all foreigners to her.

  While everybody was filled with grief and sorrow over her mother’s demise, Kafisa was emotionless. She felt nothing, or at least that was what she displayed. She did not shed one tear. She was in attendance only because her father had ordered her to go, despite the fact that he did not attend. It was because of his reason for not attending that Kafisa was present. He had expressed to her how he felt somewhat responsible for the death of her mother and couldn’t bear seeing her looking any different than she had the day he had put her out. Kafis’s guilt and shame were the reasons he had paid for her mother’s entire funeral. Kafisa didn’t blame her father, though. She blamed and resented her mother for what she had become.