by Noire
“I luh you, Thug. You family. You my niggah to the bone. But I ain’t doin’ no murder time. Not even for you. So if they gotta find four cold bodies up in this joint tonight, then that might just be how it gotta be.”
I’m ashamed to even tell you what ran through me at that minute.
It wasn’t fear, and it wasn’t guilt or grief either.
It was survival, motherfucker!
It was do or be done. Get or get gotten. It was self-preservation like I’d never felt before, and when Rome passed me his piece I didn’t even hesitate as I raised that bitch in the air and aimed it at Vyreen.
I’m sorry, Reeny, I told her with my eyes. Then the air split with a boom and a bloody hole appeared in Reeny’s forehead.
Cold laughter rang out behind me, and when I looked over my shoulder Pimp was still holding out the piece he had just fired over my head.
“Bitch-ass niggah,” he said, then laughed again. “You ain’t no killer. You ain’t even got the heart.”
I stared at the unfired pistol gripped in my hand. Deep inside I was glad he had beat me to pulling that trigger. And nah, I wasn’t no bitch-ass woman-killer. But I had just come real close to becoming one. But what Pimp did next was just fuckin’ unbelievable. He grabbed Rome’s knife and walked around by Miss Lady’s head. Then he bent over and stuck her twice. Once in each of her dead eyeballs.
“What you see in my eyes now, bitch?”
Rome laughed like a motherfucker as blood streamed down Miss Lady’s face, but a big piece of my soul had just cracked off and died.
A minute later Pimp had all the money in a duffle bag, and we bust out the kitchen door and ran down the side alley. Pimp and Rome ran toward 125th Street, but I headed east to the Harlem River Drive.
Walking. Grieving. Wrapped up in cold guilt. Rapping.
It’s just a day in the life
I’m doing wrong/all along/tried making it right
Pay the cost to be the boss/it’s the ultimate price
We in the dark/look how easy we can stray from the light
God strengthen my sight
It’s just a day in the life
I stripped off the shirt that was wet with Miss Lady’s blood, and walked out of Manhattan and all the way to the Bronx, going downtown to cross the Third Avenue Bridge, and hitting the Boogie Down just as the borough started coming alive. The streets was waking up. Winos was staggering out of foyers as crackheads came out of drug houses squinting into the sunshine like they were zombies who’d been hiding underground all night.
By the time I made it up to Fordham Road I’d walked into a serious mental zone and come to a cold, hard decision.
I had to lose T.C. and Miss Lady.
Wipe ’em outta my mind and outta my heart. Cause the only way I was gonna survive what I’d just seen was to put it away. To bury that shit. To dig it so fuckin’ deep that I didn’t even remember it. Put it away like it never even happened.
And that’s exactly what I did.
They say what goes around comes around, and that shit ain’t no lie.
We’d gotten Smoove back, but Pimp ended getting served, and that stupid niggah Rome definitely got his too. I hadn’t gotten mine yet, but I knew it was coming.
They found T.C. and them that same afternoon, when Vyreen’s husband rolled up looking for her. Word of the robbery and killings was all over the streets when I got back to Harlem later that night, and I stayed balled up in Muddah’s bed as people all over town mourned for T.C. and Miss Lady.
Over the next few days the cops half-ass questioned a couple of people, including me and Pimp, but they wasn’t able to put nothing on us. They sweated Vyreen’s husband pretty hard for a while, though. They figured he’d prolly walked in on his woman getting fucked, and then nutted up and started shooting, but Razz had worked an overnight shift for Transit and was able to prove he wasn’t nowhere around.
Two weeks after the funerals, Pimp got knocked.
You must be crazy if you think all that money we stole from T.C. went to G.
Pimp held on to a bucketload for self, and he’d torn Rome off a few decent slices of cheese too. I didn’t want a penny of it, and I told him that when he tried to slide me some.
But retribution is a funny thang, yo, and when it was all said and done, Pimp ended up getting sent upstate for some shit he didn’t even do. What was even worse, they locked him down in the same joint where his mother Dru was doing hard time for life.
You see, a few months earlier Pimp had started fuckin with this jawn from the Bronx. Her name was Nayesha, and she was one of them weak-minded females, the only kind that Pimp could hold on to for longer than a minute. Nayesha had a baby though, and after all that shit went down up in T.C.’s Place, Pimp decided to lay low at her Jerome Avenue crib until life cooled off in Harlem. But Pimp had hand problems, and Nayesha got tired of that niggah beating on her and busting up her face. When she told Pimp she was gonna call the cops on him, that niggah snatched her baby up and hung him over the balcony and told her he was gonna fly his little ass down to the ground.
Nayesha fought like a madwoman for her son, and that niggah dropped the baby on the floor and pulled out his knife, then fucked around and cut off Nayesha’s finger trying to get to her throat.
Nayesha and her baby survived, but she got her a little get-back on Pimp’s ass too.
That sneaky girl testified against Pimp at a trial they held on the side of her hospital bed, and not only did she tell the po-po it was Pimp who had cut her, she told them he’d stuck up a low-level drug dealer over on Jackson Avenue, and told them where they could find his stash at her crib. So Pimp ended up losing all his money and getting served, even though he didn’t even know no drug dealers out on Jackson Avenue, and the only person he had stuck up recently was T.C.
So there you got it. Pimp got a robbery charge hung around his neck, and Rome? That sherm fucked around and tried to buy some dope from an undercover cop. A whole lotta dope. Me? My retribution was a lot slower in coming. But I took my ass upstate too. Not to the joint, but to college, man. Late August found me wearing the orange at Syracuse University. Running ball and humping ass. I left my demons and my past right on St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem where they belonged, and did my damnedest not to look back.
Chapter 10
“So where are we gone go today, little man?” Carmiesha asked the boy walking next to her. She’d been picking him up one weekend a month for just about his entire life, and each time she saw him she felt something different. He was tall for his age, and he looked just like her. Except for his skin tone. It was dark and smooth. Much prettier than hers. “You wanna check out the Science Center or the Botanical Gardens?”
“I don’t wanna go see no flowers and gardens!” he said, looking at her like she was crazy. “I wanna go to the movies. I wanna see that new hood movie that got a pimp in it. Hustle & Flow.”
Carmiesha wiped some crumbs off the And 1 shirt she had just bought him and checked to make sure his jeans were pulled all the way up on his ass.
“I know you know me better than that, Jahlil. You know I ain’t taking you to see no garbage like that when that’s the same kinda madness going on here in Harlem every single day.”
Jahlil made a dissing noise. “All a my friends done seen that movie except me. I can’t wait till I’m big enough to go where I wanna go.”
Carmiesha ignored his noise. Jahlil was only seven, and he had a long way to go before he was old enough to do whatever he wanted. But that was something he needed to get inside that hard head of his.
She had a lot of love for him, but something hurt deep in Carmiesha’s heart whenever she looked at the child. He was so restless and frustrated. He had always been that way, even as a baby. There were times when she could tell the Washingtons were overwhelmed by Jahlil’s difficult ways, and one time Jessie even had the nerve to ask Carmiesha if she had smoked anything like crack or ice while she was pregnant with him.
“We’re
gonna go someplace that stimulates your mind in the right way, Jahlil. Just like we usually do. It ain’t gotta be the Botanical Gardens but it will be somewhere where you can see that life is more than just what goes on out here on the streets every day.”
They ended up at the New York Hall of Science out in Queens. Jahlil liked riding the trains, and Carmiesha liked taking him all the places she had never gotten a chance to go when she was a kid. Sometimes she wondered how different their lives mighta turned out if they’d lived differently. Her brother Rome had recently gotten stabbed to death in prison, and Justice had disappeared one night with some dudes from Brooklyn and never come back. Poor Mere’maw was racked with grief and worry over those boys, even though she should have seen it coming.
Carmiesha looked at Jahlil and smiled. She could see how smart the child was. Even if he did show his ass and cut up in school almost every day. She still wrestled with herself over the way she got pregnant, and after signing those adoption papers she knew she could never be a real mother to Jahlil. But even still, all she wanted was for him to have a better life than the one she and her brothers had.
So many times Carmiesha wished she had stayed her ass in the house that hot summer night. And if she had to get pregnant, she wished she had given her virginity up to Dre and gotten pregnant by him, instead of getting raped on a pissy elevator floor by his cousin.
But a lot had happened since those days and Carmiesha gave herself props for coming up from all that. Miss Lady had supported her and paid her way through beauty school, and afterwards Carmiesha had gotten grants and scholarships that would take her through community college. She worked all day, but took as many classes as she could at night, and in a few years she would graduate with her degree in business.
Carmiesha owed so much to Miss Lady. She’d been dead for a few months, but to Carmiesha it felt like it had happped just an hour ago. She didn’t know how Dre had sat through that funeral without breaking down, as much as Miss Lady and T.C. had done for him. The whole world seemed like it turned out to put those two away. People were busting down the walls of the church, screaming and wailing out their grief, but not Dre. He never shed a single tear. He’d left for college without talking a whole lot about it either, and when she’d looked in his eyes to see what was in his heart, all she found was a brick wall.
They stayed at the Hall of Science until late in the afternoon, and Jahlil waited until they had taken the train back to Harlem and were walking towards the Washingtons’ house before he started asking all his questions again.
“So, Carmiesha. You gone tell me about my father or what? Last time you said you would tell me more when I turned eight, right?”
Carmiesha took his hand, surprised that he didn’t get embarrassed and pull away. She had always felt boxed in by that whole father issue. The Washingtons had never lied to Jahlil about her being his mother. She’d been a part of his life since the day she gave him up. Miss Lady had made sure of that. But Jahlil had been wanting to know who his father was for years, and Carmiesha knew she couldn’t just keep telling him Jesus and brushing him off.
Swinging his hand, Carmiesha sighed. “Well you won’t be eight for a couple of weeks, Jahlil, but still. Mr. Washington has been a real good father to you, right?”
He nodded.
“So what are you missing out on, man? You have everything you need right there with them. Don’t you think it might hurt Mr. Washington’s feelings if you keep asking about some other daddy?”
Jahlil thought for a few seconds. “I don’t be trying to hurt his feelings. But I still wanna know, Carmiesha. How you know my real daddy ain’t looking for me? How you know he don’t miss me and want me to come live with him?”
Oh that shit ain’t gone never happen, Carmiesha thought.
“Your real father is in college,” she lied. “He’s from Harlem, but he’s far, far away and doing a lot of things right now. So you can’t just go live with him, Jahlil. Even if he wanted you to. They don’t let little kids live at college.”
“Then he should be here living with me!” Jahlil said, sticking his little lip out.
Carmiesha wondered. “Jahlil, do you ever get mad at me? You know I’m your real mother, but you don’t live with me. I gave you up to Mr. and Mrs. Washington. Does that make you feel mad sometimes?”
He shrugged, then put his little arm around her waist. “No, Carmiesha, I don’t get mad at you. You’re my real mother because you had me. But you feel like my auntie. I like you being my aunt.”
Carmiesha felt reassured, but she couldn’t help noticing how quiet Jahlil was when she dropped him off at the Washingtons’ and he told her good-bye. He didn’t give her a kiss like he usually did, and she hoped he would just forget about all that father shit and be grateful for the family God had blessed him with.
But daddy or no daddy, the boy was bad as hell. Jessie had told her that if Jahlil got into one more fight in school they was gone put him out, and he’d have to go into a different school district. Carmiesha hated that he was so hard for them to handle but wondered if she could have done any better with him herself. As much as she hated to think it, she could definitely see some signs of Jahlil’s real father in him, and out of all the shit that hurt her in life, that was the worst hurt of all.
Carmiesha could hear the babies crying when she got off the elevator. It sounded like Noojie had at least two or three of them in there with her and she hoped she’d get to see Kathy’s cute little twins. She knocked on the door.
“It’s me, Noojie. Carmiesha.”
Noojie came to the door wearing a linty black sweater and a pair of men’s boxers.
“Muddah. Girl, I’m glad to see you. Dre up there in college, Pimp up there locked up, Smoove out there doing who the hell knows what. Here. Take one of these damn babies.”
She passed Carmiesha one of the two babies she was trying to hold on to. Carmiesha took the baby and noticed how skinny Noojie was. Both of those babies put together probably weighed more than their grandmother did.
“How long they been here?” she asked.
She followed Noojie into the living room where a baby was in a walker and another one was laying on a towel spread out on the floor.
“Since this morning. I thought I was only gonna have Little Precious today, but Vikki got a temporary job and they called her. She can’t pay nobody to watch Shantay since she ain’t working every day, so I said I would keep her.” Noojie picked up a Nuk pacifier off the table and stuck it in the baby’s mouth.
“Kathy had to drop the twins off because she been spotting all day. I don’t know why that stupid girl went and got herself pregnant again so soon when neither she nor Andre can take care of these two they already got.”
“I hear that,” Carmiesha said and kissed T-Roy’s fat little cheek. “But the guy she’s with now seems decent and besides, she would have to get pregnant about three more times just to catch up with Dre. So how’s Duqueesa? What’s Rasheena’s story?”
Noojie put the baby down and lit a cigarette. She walked into the kitchen, stepping over toys and baby clothes and came back with two beers. She passed one to Muddah.
“Rasheena is just sorry as all hell. I might end up keeping Duqueesa for good. If it wasn’t for you that little girl would been done starved, Muddah. You must love the shit outta Dre the way you help all his bitches take care of they kids.”
Carmiesha just rubbed the baby’s head. His little cornrows was so ashy and caked up with dust it was a shame. She was willing to take his braids out and re-do them, but she’d probably comb out all his hair trying to ungunk it.
But Noojie was right. She did love Dre. She had probably loved him from the day he brought her that soap powder to wash out her dirty clothes. But the first time she found out that he had gotten somebody pregnant Carmiesha had been tore up. Here she had snuck around and hid her pregnancy from him and then given her baby up, and he messed around and stuck a baby up in somebody else’s ass.
But
when Little Precious was born Carmiesha had fallen in love with her. And yeah. She loved every last one of them six-fingered babies Andre had made. She knew all of their mamas too. Most of them either lived nearby, or had gone to school with her in the hood, and almost all of them came by Flip It and Clip It to get their hair done.
So whenever Carmiesha had a few extra dollars she would help Noojie buy Pampers and snowsuits and stuff for the babies. Not because she was rich or crazy, but because those chicks needed help and wasn’t nobody else available to give them none. The Washingtons would never let her give them a dollar for Jahlil, so Carmiesha considered what she did for these babies a small thing.
Except for Rasheena, the rest of the baby mamas was at least struggling to live halfway right. They used to clown and act shitty whenever they came by Noojie’s and saw Carmiesha there. But every last one of them ended up being grateful to her for the things she did for their kids. She gave them babies baths, washed and braided their hair, rocked them when they was teething, and changed their shitty asses when they had diarrhea. And whenever Dre tore her off some money, she always split it up between his kids. She would’ve felt real minor taking all his cash and spending it on herself, knowing how needy his babies were. So in a way, whether Dre knew it or not, he did pay a little bit of child support.
But just because she loved Dre and loved his kids didn’t mean she was stupid enough to put up with his bullshit. It was better for both of them that he was off in college upstate because Carmiesha couldn’t see herself spending the rest of her life with a deadbeat dick-slinger who dropped babies all over the place and then forgot about them. That shit was just plain crazy.
So Carmiesha had started seeing other guys. She made sure anybody she fucked was as different from Dre and his crew as possible. Right now she was hooked up with a cool dude named Ya-Yo from 116th Street, and although he couldn’t put that dick on her like Dre did, he had a real job with UPS and he treated her right. Things were really starting to get serious between them, and what she liked the most about Ya-Yo, aside from the way he ate her pussy, was that he knew how to tell the damn truth. Carmiesha had never once busted him in a lie, and she never had no kinda drama with him and no other chick. She damn sure couldn’t say that for Dre.