by Noire
“That’s cool,” Muddah told me as I held her hand tight. “I can’t hang out for long neither, but we can make the most of the little time we got.”
Chapter 6
Carmiesha liked being seen out on the streets with Thug.
He was tall as hell, and fine too. It didn’t hurt that he moved with an attitude about him that commanded total and immediate respect. All kinds of females stared him down like he didn’t have a woman on his arm, but he knew not to let her bust him checking them out in return cause she was tired of bitches blowing up her spot and disrespecting her on account of his roaming dick. Andre had just turned twenty and he already had six kids. He’d gotten two females pregnant in the past year and one of them, a chick named Kathy, had the nerve to drop a set of twins.
“That Thug motherfucker need to get his dick laminated,” one of the girls at the beauty salon had laughed when she found out Carmiesha was tight with her favorite rapper. Chickenheads was steady putting Dre on blast for having three babies in one year, when behind closed doors they were dying to get some of that infamous dick he was slinging. Carmiesha had ignored the nasty comment cause she wasn’t trying to get in no fight and get her face sliced up behind no man who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.
Besides, she thought, remembering the night she had met him. It wasn’t like she couldn’t tell Dre was a ho right off the jump….
She’d been sitting on the edge of her bed and squinting at the pages in front of her. She was trying hard to get the hang of eighth grade math, but the lone lightbulb in the room kept flickering on and off and her back hurt from bending over the desk she had made out of a milk crate.
“Muddah!” her grandmother had called from the kitchen. Carmiesha closed her heavy math book and sighed.
“I’m doing my homework, Mere’maw. What you need?”
“Come on in here and help me get some food on the table for your brothers, baby. It’s getting late and I bet that narrow-ass Rome ain’t put nothing in his stomach all day.”
Carmiesha sucked her teeth under her breath but she stood up anyway. She didn’t see why she had to do a damn thing for her trifling-ass brothers. Even though she was the youngest, Carmiesha was the only one of Mere’maw’s grandkids who was gonna make it out of junior high school. Both Rome and her other brother Justice had quit going to school before the seventh grade just so they could run the streets and hang out full-time.
Carmiesha walked the few steps down the hall and into the small kitchen. Greasy pots and pans were stacked everywhere, and dirty dishes overflowed out the sink. She looked at the mess and wanted to cry. She loved Mere’maw like crazy, but she was tired of living in this slum. She busted her ass going to school every day and shampooing hair for tips at the beauty shop on the weekends, and the only thing Mere’maw had to do all day was keep the house clean. Instead she wasted all her energy worrying about what her grandsons were doing in the streets and let the household chores slip. That meant Carmiesha had to pick up her slack.
Carmiesha had blinked back tears and made herself go hard inside. Right now she was wearing her last pair of clean panties and there was no kind of soap whatsoever in the house. She would have to go downstairs and beg Yasmere for a cup of soap powder. She’d use most of it to wash the dirty dishes, and if there was any left over she’d run water in the sink and wash out her panties and bras and maybe a shirt or two. That was the only way she would have some clean clothes to wear to school the next day.
“Here,” Mere’maw said, passing Carmiesha a chipped dinner plate. “Fix your own food first.”
Carmiesha reached for the plate and missed. She cringed as it fell to the floor and slid under the table, and when she bent over and reached down to get it, she jerked her hand back and cursed.
“Shit!” She glanced over at Mere’maw, who had narrowed her lips in disapproval.
“Sorry bout that, Mere’maw. There’s a dead mouse in that trap down there. I almost touched it.”
“Them boys.” Mere’maw shook her head as Carmiesha carefully retrieved the plate. It was cracked, but she was gonna eat out of it anyway otherwise she’d have to get a dirty one out the sink and rinse it off. “I told them to get that mouse outta there two days ago. Seem like I be talking to a brick wall when I ask them to do something round here.”
Carmiesha shrugged. “Well maybe if you didn’t let them get away with murder, Mere’maw, they’d listen to you better. Rome is almost fifteen and Justice is sixteen. They don’t go to school and they don’t work nowhere neither, unless you count all that scrambling they doing up there on that corner. The three of us should be taking care of you instead of you trying to feed us every day. You took us in raised us when Mama got killed, and that’s enough.”
Mere’maw took the top off a small pot of neck bones. There were a few grains of rice floating in the thin gravy and two long strips of onions. “That’s what family do, Lil’ Muddah. If I hadn’ta took y’all in, the state woulda got you and who knows where y’all would be right now.”
After dividing the small pot of food into the four plates, Carmiesha covered her brothers’ plates with a torn piece of paper bag and set them inside the stove. She handed a plate to Mere’maw, who took it and shuffled back into the living room so she could finish watching her talk show. Carmiesha ate her own food standing up in the kitchen. She was too scared to sit down at the table where that dead mouse was.
Carmeisha ate her food real slow, enjoying the few grains of rice and dipping the neck bone into the watery gravy and then sucking it dry. Hunger was something that was with her every day, and she felt lucky to get the small but tasty meal. She kept aligning the crack in the plate so the liquid wouldn’t seep through, and when it did, she used her finger to wipe it from the bottom of her plate and scoop it into her mouth.
Life had always been hard for her. At the age of eight Carmiesha had been the only witness to a brutal crime. She had watched her father pull a .38 from a plastic bag, fire two blasts into her mother’s chest, then raise the gun and shoot himself in the head.
Carmiesha and her brothers were sent to live with Mere’maw after their parents died. Carmiesha could understand why her brothers had turned to slinging rock and beating women. They got that shit from their father, and it ran in their blood. Carmiesha picked up her empty plate and dropped it on top of the pile already in the sink. She was still hungry and had been tempted to lick the last bit of gravy off the plate, but forced herself not to.
“I’ll be right back,” she called out to Mere’maw, taking a plastic cup from a cabinet.
Mere’maw didn’t answer. She was too busy laughing at something somebody had said on television.
Carmiesha left the apartment and ran down the stairs to the first floor. She hated borrowing shit from Yasmere, but she was the only one in the building who ever had anything to loan. Yasmere had a nice mother in the house and a father who had a real job. Her gear stayed tight, and she never went hungry. Even though she fucked anything with a dick, including Justice and Rome, she usually gave Carmiesha whatever she came asking for. But only after she made sure she made her feel like a piece of shit for asking.
Carmiesha had exited the stairwell and was approaching Yasmere’s door when she saw that it was already open. Yasmere was in the doorway wearing a thin robe. Carmiesha could tell she was butt-ass naked underneath. One of the new guys who had just moved in the building was standing there with her. He was tall and buff and had creamy light skin and long cornrows. He had on a wifebeater and some low-slung jeans, and he was sucking Yasmeen’s neck and feeling all over her big titty like he was her man. Carmiesha saw Yasmere giggle and rub old boy’s dick through his pants. She started to turn around and walk the other way, but they both looked up and saw her when the exit door slammed.
The guy, who was even finer up close, dropped Yasmere’s titty and came up off her neck, and stared at Carmiesha.
“What?” Yasmere laughed, sliding his hand back to her big breast. “Your ass
down here begging again? Girl, when you gone get a damn job and handle your damn business?”
Carmiesha just looked at her. She knew Yasmere was a minor ho, but she didn’t have to put her on blast just to impress some niggah. Carmiesha had a job and Yasmere knew it. She came her frontin’ ass into the shop and got her hair washed and wrapped every week. For free. And Carmiesha always hooked her up lovely without complaining.
“I just—,” Carmiesha started, then stopped. This long-legged gangsta-looking niggah was staring her down like it was her titty he wished he was holding in his hand. He had a thick tattoo on his arm that said T.H.U.G., and a diamond earring glinting in his left ear. Carmiesha turned toward Yasmere, ignoring him. He was tall and real cute, but he looked just like the rest of the no-good crack-slanging niggahs who prowled the avenue with her brothers. “Damn, Yasmere. You ain’t gotta go there like that. I just need to borrow a little bit of soap powder, that’s all.”
Yasmere laughed again. “Borrow? Bitch what the fuck you mean borrow? ‘Borrow’ mean you planning on paying something back, and you ain’t never did that!”
Carmiesha knew what time it was. This bitch was acting extra cause she’d just got fucked.
“Cool,” she said and walked back toward the stairwell. She’d wash her dirty drawers out with two drops of fuckin toothpaste before she gave that bitch the satisfaction of begging her in front of some stray niggah.
Back upstairs in her apartment Carmiesha went straight to the kitchen and started stacking the pots and dishes. When she had them in high piles, she ran cold water over them one by one and scraped off the crusted-up food the best she could. There was never more than a little bit of hot water in the pipes and she wanted to save it to wash her panties.
She was still scrubbing pots when somebody banged on the front door like they was trying to tear it down. Carmiesha froze. Nobody but the police knocked like that. She cut off the water and moved toward the door and met Mere’maw coming down the hall.
“Chile,” Mere’maw said, her eyes wide. “A knock like that ain’t nothing good.”
Carmiesha got in front of her. “Let me open it, Mere’maw.” Wasn’t no need in the cops banging down the goddamn door. Justice and Rome were up on the avenue, right in plain sight.
She flung open the door with much attitude on her face.
“Whassup.”
It was one of the new guys from next door. The one who had been downstairs fucking Yasmere. He was holding a big red box in his hands.
“You wanted some soap powder, right? Well here go some.”
Carmiesha let him stand there holding it as she stared him down.
“Sorry. You got the wrong door. The cheap pussy is downstairs where you just came from,” she told him. “I don’t fuck for soap powder so you can take that shit back wherever you stole it from.”
Instead of giving her the street attitude that she expected, the young brothah gave her a big pretty smile.
“I thought you’d prolly say some wild shit like that.” He kept right on smiling as she slammed the door in his face, leaving him standing there with his big red box.
Backing away from the door, Carmiesha bumped right into Mere’maw, who’d overheard the short conversation.
“I don’t fuck for soap powder neither,” the old woman said, shocking Carmiesha and making her jaw drop, “but Lord knows we can use some.”
Mere’maw nudged her granddaughter aside and opened the door again. The boy was gone, but the large box of soap powder was sitting right there on the floor.
Lightweight motherfucker, Carmiesha had thought. She’d known he was a poseur cause the box had been opened. His shit mighta looked tight, but he was straight fake. A paid niggah wouldn’ta brought her no soap powder that had already been opened and used. But at least it was Tide and not the weak store brand.
Carmiesha grabbed the box before her grandmother could reach for it, surprised to find that it was so heavy. Walking back into the apartment, Carmiesha set the soap powder on the counter and flipped the lid open. She stared at the contents, and her jaw dropped again.
Two one-hundred-dollar bills were sitting on top of the white flakes.
She picked up the money and felt it, then held each bill up to the light. As much as she hated to take that niggah’s money, she wasn’t a damn fool. Justice and Rome tricked out every dime they hustled on bitches and slum jewelry. It was hard to get two dollars out of either of them, and whatever chump change they gave Mere’maw they expected her to squeeze it until it hollered. Two hundred dollars would buy them some groceries and pay the light bill too.
Carmiesha folded the bills and stuck them in her pocket. She’d keep the money, but she still wasn’t impressed. His pretty ass needed to stick to fuckin with hoes like Yasmere, and leave future business owners like her the hell alone. There wasn’t shit about Mister T.H.U.G. that pressed her out. At least not on that night.
Chapter 7
“You want some Kool-Aid?” Carmiesha asked.
Thug nodded and sat down on Mere’maw’s raggedy sofa. “Yeah. Y’all got some sugar in it, right?”
She slapped him on the back of his head. “Yeah we got sugar in it, fool. Don’t play like we still so poor where we gotta drink colored water and make like it’s Kool-Aid.”
“C’mon, Muddah.” Thug rubbed the back of his head. “What I tell you about putting your hands on me, girl?”
Carmiesha stood between his long legs with her hands on her hips. “What I tell you about calling me ‘Muddah’? My name is Carmiesha, just so you know.”
Thug pulled her down on the couch with him. Carmiesha let him slide her onto his lap, but she moved her head when he tried to kiss her.
“Let me hear you say that. Carmiesha. Car-mee-sha. Come on. You can do it.”
Normally Thug would have cracked backed on her. He woulda called her some of everything except Carmiesha, just to make her laugh. But today he was quiet and Carmiesha saw the trouble that was in his eyes.
“C’mere, boy,” she said, hugging him and laying her head on his big shoulder. She took his hand and instead of holding hers, his fingers stayed limp. “What’s up, Andre? You ain’t looked this shook since Kathy told you she was having twins.”
Thug made a noise and tried to push her off his lap. “Stop playin. I ain’t in the mood for that shit and besides. I don’t even know if them babies are mine.”
“Niggah, you the one need to stop!” Carmiesha said, smirking. “Them babies is yours for real. They both got your mark. Just like Little Precious, Dante, Shantay, and Duqueesa. Why you frontin’? One of them twins was born with six fingers on both hands, and the other one was born with six fingers and six toes. So don’t even try it cause a judge ain’t gone buy it.”
Thug sighed. “Where Mere’maw at?”
Carmiesha nodded. “She’s back there snoring. She was up all night talking about how bad her stomach hurt. I keep telling her she need to leave all them sweets she be eating alone.”
“Cool,” Thug said and put his arm around her.
Carmiesha laid against him, enjoying the feeling as he rubbed her shoulders and ran his fingers down her bare arm.
“You hear anything more from the college yet?”
Thug shrugged. “Same old shit. They gone give me a full ride and pay for my room and books and shit. Coach tried to talk me out of majoring in engineering, though. He thinks I should prolly study something more low-key like basket-weaving or some stupid shit.” He shrugged again. “Them motherfuckers don’t give a damn what I do. Long as I play good ball and put some Ws in their column they could give a fuck about what kinda learning skills I got.”
Carmiesha was proud of Thug for getting accepted at a top university like Syracuse. Even though she was a year younger, he’d fallen behind two grades so she had graduated a year ahead of him. She’d already finished beauty school and had just enrolled in college, but instead of going on to a big university she’d had to be satisfied with a CUNY scholarship that wo
uld let her go to community college for free.
She put her arms around his neck and kissed his bottom lip. “So you letting that shit bother you? Is that why you walking around here looking like you lost your last damn dollar? Tonight’s the Sweep or Weep over at T.C.’s, right? Take your ass over there and win you some green boys if you broke.”
Thug pulled away and sat up straight. The look on his face was ice cold. “Who the fuck said I was broke, Muddah? Don’t never let me catch you talking no shit about me and money, girl. I ain’t broke, and I ain’t looking for no damn money.”
Carmiesha got quiet. She knew for a fact that something was wrong. Thug never went off on her. Never. She could call him all kinds of lying, cheating, dick-slinging ho-ass motherfuckers. She could slap him upside his head and tell him to kiss her funky ass, and he never raised his voice to her. Never.
“Cool. Stay your ass home tonight then. You still want that cup of Kool-Aid?”
“Nah,” Thug said quietly. His arm went back around her shoulder and his fingers started massaging the curve of her hip. “I don’t want no fuckin’ Kool-Aid, Muddah. I want me some a you.”
Thug slipped his tongue into her mouth and licked it around in greedy circles. His need was thick and heavy in his lap, and he kissed her with so much heat that Carmiesha felt her panties getting wet.
“I need you,” Thug whispered, pressing his lips forcefully to hers, his tongue snaking around the inside of her mouth. “I need you, Muddah. I need some of your pussy.”
Carmiesha didn’t resist him when his hands started roaming, even though they hadn’t fucked in a long time on account of the guy Ya-Yo she was seeing, and all of Thug’s baby-mama drama. He had really hurt her by messing around with chickenheads like Rasheena and Kathy and Paula, and being stupid enough to run up in all them bitches raw at that. The only reason she was still speaking to him was because her conscience fucked with her to the point where she had no choice but to forgive him. Thug wasn’t the only one who had made a baby. It’s just that his shit was out there on blast for the world to see and hers wasn’t.