by Noire
I kept my bag with me and took a seat near a window, across from the bathroom. I closed my eyes again and minutes later I felt the bus pull off. But we wasn’t even out the lot good before I heard the brakes whish and felt us stop again. I opened my eyes. Po-po lights was flashing. A squad car had pulled up right next to us.
My street instincts kicked in hard.
I started to get up and duck into the bathroom, but what the fuck for? I hadn’t done shit wrong. Whoever they was looking for, I just wanted them to state their damn business and keep it rolling. I needed to get to Harlem and I didn’t have no time to waste.
Two officers got on the bus. They said something to the driver, and that motherfucker turned around and pointed straight toward the back where I was sitting. They moved down the aisle, and when they got far enough in the back where the only passenger left was me, I knew what the fuck was up.
“Andre Williams?”
I couldn’t believe that bitch-ass Dave had sent the po-po after me for two hundred fuckin’ bills. As many times as I had fed his broke ass offa money I made from stealing cars. All I could do was shake my head.
“Why you wanna know?”
This wasn’t no campus security. These was straight state cops. I got the badge flashed at me and all that.
“We have a warrant out for your arrest, Mr. Williams. Put your hands where I can see them, then stand up and turn around.”
I knew the drill. I cursed Dave’s punk ass again then said. “What’s all this about? That motherfuckah cryin’ over a little loan?”
“You’re being charged with one count of forcible sexual assault, Mr. Williams. You’d probably understand that better as rape.”
But I didn’t understand it. Even after they tossed me in the back of a squad car and took me down to the station, I still didn’t understand it.
“Who’d I rape?” I kept asking them. “Yo! Who the fuck did I rape?”
“You’ll find out everything soon enough.”
“Listen, man,” I tried to explain at the jailhouse while some rednecked hillbilly cop was fingerprinting me. “I ain’t never raped nobody in my life. C’mon, man. I found out tonight that my moms just died. I was on my way home. To the city. I’m her only son and I gotta bury her.”
He didn’t even look at me. Just kept rolling my fingers around in the ink.
They took me in an interview room, and two detectives came in to question me.
I was so hyped I wouldn’t sit down. Them white crackers promised to bust me in my head if I didn’t.
“Y’all gotta tell me what’s going on here. My moms just died, and I need to go bury her.”
One of them glanced at some papers in a folder.
“We received a complaint that you were involved in the gang rape of Kimberly Derrick.”
“Kimberly who? Who the fuck is that?”
They ran that shit down on me so I could understand it.
It was crazy. That yellow bitch who was dancing on that dresser had brought a charge on me. And not just on me. On every niggah who was up in that room watching her stick her fingers in her pussy.
“Look, man,” I said, shaking my head. “I never touched that girl. I swear to God. I got outta there as soon as I got the call about my mother.”
“So that’s your story?”
“Hell, yeah! That’s the goddamn truth!”
“Well you can tell it to the judge when you and your friends go in front of him on Monday morning.”
I yelled. “Monday? I just told you my moms just fuckin’ died! I gotta get down to Harlem and handle her business today!”
The old cop nodded, then stood up.
“Harlem, huh?”
“Yeah. Harlem.”
“Well, last time I checked they had morgue freezers down in Harlem too. Let ’em put ya mammy on some ice. She’ll wait.”
They ended up holding us for over a week.
Me, Blackie, Reg, Lewis, and five other ballers who had been in the room that night. I didn’t know what kinda story them other playas was telling, but I straight stuck to mine, cause it was the truth. I didn’t rape nobody. I never touched that girl. Yeah, I had boned two females that night, but she wasn’t one of them.
I had used my one phone call to call Coach Boyhem. I woke him up outta his sleep, and he sounded mad as fuck about it too cause all the other players had already called him earlier. I explained everything to him the best I could. I even told him about Noojie.
“I know you prolly don’t believe me, but I didn’t do shit this time. I wasn’t even there. I was sitting in the bus station all night long. I don’t know how that girl got my name, or why she saying I fucked her, but I swear to God, I didn’t.”
They kept us locked up two to a cell, and when my boys found out about Noojie, ere last one of them stood up for me. They wrote statements confirming that I had left way before that girl quit dancing and got down off the dresser. None of them said they saw me there when she was getting fucked. Even the ones who was secretly hating on me cause I got mad play time on the court, they told the truth.
I was surprised as hell when big girl showed up. Dee-Dee. The chick I had bent over in the bathroom and whose name I hadn’t even remembered. She came down to the jail and gave a written statement in my behalf. She told ’em exactly what time she was with me and what we was doing, and backed my story up when she said she had looked outta her window a few minutes after I left her, and saw me leaving the sorority house and running across the street.
After all that, I saw the judge, and they finally turned my ass loose that next Monday night. Somehow those cracker bastards lost my cell phone, and I ended up having to buy another bus ticket cause technically I had taken a fifteen-foot ride that night, but I didn’t care.
I took a late-night bus to 42nd Street, then hopped on the subway and got to Harlem real early Tuesday morning. People was leaving their cribs to go to work, and I saw Muddah coming out of our building as I walked up.
She was walking with her head down, but when she looked up and saw me a look crossed her face like somebody had beat her in the stomach.
“I got locked up,” I explained as she put her face in my chest. Her arms was around my waist, and I was holding her too. I couldn’t believe how good it felt to be next to her. This girl was like vitamins to me. She fortified me on all levels, and sex didn’t have shit to do with it.
“We didn’t know where you were,” she said. “I kept calling your cell phone, and you didn’t pick up.”
I just kept holding on to her. She was really the only thing keeping me on my feet, and if she had’a moved I prolly woulda lost my legs.
“I got hit with a charge, but it all worked out. I’m here now. Do Smoove know what happened to my moms? Where’s Pimp?”
Muddah had a big handbag hanging off her shoulder, and I took it from her and put it over mine. “What funeral home they got Noojie at? I wanna see her body.”
Muddah put her head down for a quick second. When she looked up tears was flowing from her eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Dre. We didn’t know what else to do!” She sniffed and pushed her hair back. Then she let go of my waist and held my hands real tight. “We buried Noojie on Saturday, baby. Pimp paid half, and Smoove came up with the rest. He got some kinda emergency loan from the Marine Corps. Your Aunt Dru was here. They brought her down for the funeral cause your mother was her next of kin. They kept her handcuffed, but at least they let her come.”
“What?” I yelled. I jerked away from her. “What the fuck you mean she got buried? Y’all had a funeral, Muddah? Without me? Y’all put my moms in the motherfuckin’ ground without waiting for her fuckin son?”
Muddah started crying real hard, but I didn’t care.
I dropped her bag and started running. Just fuckin’ running. I ran for blocks and blocks and blocks, and I didn’t see or hear a damn thing. I was deaf, dumb, and blind. The only thing in front of me was the guilty fact that Noojie was really gone, and I would
never see her again. I ran across Lenox Avenue and down toward 115th Street. I ran through crowds of people like I was blind. All who didn’t get out my way got knocked the fuck down. I don’t know how long I kept moving, but I didn’t stop until I couldn’t control my legs no more. I stumbled into a Spanish store and rushed toward the beverage department in the back, knocking shit off the shelves as I went. I carried three forties of St. Ides up to the counter, then took my purchases outside. I crossed the street and sat on somebody’s stoop and started drinking. And I didn’t stop until the pain was gone, and I couldn’t feel my heart weeping no more.
Chapter 18
It was a week after Noojie’s funeral, and Carmiesha had closed the shop down early. It seemed like nobody had realized how big Noojie was in their lives until she was gone, and there was no one there to take her place.
Especially some of them crazy-ass girls who had had babies for Dre. Once she stopped running the streets and smoking crack, Noojie had really been there for her grandbabies, and a lot of times she was the only one their mamas had to depend on.
Kathy and Remy had rolled up on Carmiesha in the funeral parlor at Noojie’s wake. They was complaining about not having nobody to help them with the babies now that Noojie was gone. Carmiesha had set up a meeting at the shop and told them all to be there. Those chicks needed to try and figure out what they was gonna do about them babies now that Noojie wasn’t gonna be around.
“Look,” she told them. They was sitting around in her styling chairs looking at her like she had all the answers. “I don’t know exactly what y’all gone do, but I know y’all need to come up with a plan.”
Those chicks was staring at their nails, digging all in their high-priced purses, and checking their shit out in the mirror while she was talking.
“Noojie is gone, so the free gravy train ain’t rolling through no more. Some of y’all been blowing up my shit asking me to watch your kids when you know I’m running a shop over here and gotta handle my own business. So I’ma tell all of y’all right now. I can’t watch no babies all day long, but I can keep helping y’all whenever I have a little extra ends or whenever Dre sends me any money. Which ain’t all that often.”
Rasheena stood up and smirked. She put her hand on her curved-out hip and started talking shit. “Where’s the fuckin’ baby you got by Dre, Muddah? Oh, that’s right. You ain’t got none. That niggah on the mic cutting records for Ruthless and them, why he ain’t sending none of that money to us for his kids?”
Kathy jumped in. “Sheena, don’t be making no noise up in here. Muddah been helping all a our kids since they was born.”
“Nah, nah, nah,” Rasheena said, spinning around to put her eye on everybody. Carmiesha just kept quiet. She could see what Dre had seen in this girl. She had a real cute face and a small waist. Her ass was bouncy but her body was tight. Her shit was laid out in all directions. Acrylic nails, blue contacts, blinged-out earrings, butter hair.
“Don’t y’all bitches sit around here and front. All a y’all done said the same shit before. To me and to Noojie. Why this bitch so special when she ain’t even got no kids by Dre? She got a business and living large. I just wanna know why we gotta keep getting our money through her ass.”
Remy spoke up for Carmiesha. “We get it through her because she’s the only person Dre gives any damn thing to. And where the fuck was you when we was trying to get some money outta Dre in court? Your ass didn’t even show up. So don’t come blaming Muddah cause the judge said that niggah is in college and ain’t gotta pay no damn child support. She ain’t gotta do shit for you or Duqueesa. But she do it anyway. You oughtta be thanking her and kissing her ass.”
“I don’t need nobody to kiss my ass,” Carmiesha said, “and I agree that Dre should be taking care of all his kids. But can’t nobody sit around waiting on no niggah to decide to act right. Y’all need to start helping each other out. Watch each other’s babies. If Noojie did it, y’all should be able to do it too. Pass them clothes down when they get too small. Hell, ain’t nothing wrong with kids wearing hand-me-downs. They all sisters and brothers any damn way.”
“Still,” Rasheena said. She popped her gum and switched her bubble booty back to her chair. “Thug’s ass needs to be deep checked. What kinda niggah gone miss his own mama’s funeral? Everybody else showed up for Noojie ’cept him. If all of us hadn’t sat up front with Smoove, Pimp, and the kids, that whole family row woulda been almost empty. That’s called cold madness.”
“He was locked up,” Carmiesha said quietly. “Something happened up there in Syracuse, and he got locked up for like a week.”
Rasheena laughed. “Good for that motherfucker! He shoulda got locked up when y’all took him to court! It don’t make no sense for us to be walking around here broke when all these kids got that niggah’s DNA.”
“But he’s gone get his, though,” Paula said. “Ballers don’t stay up in college forever. Let him get a phat NBA contract and see don’t all of us be rolling around here in pimped-out rides!”
Carmiesha agreed with Paula and Rasheena a hundred percent, but she wasn’t about to go there with them. She’d been right there in that courtroom when the judge told them Andre’s ass was exempt from paying child support as long as he was in school full-time on that scholarship.
But the judge had also ragged his ho-ish ass out for being so damn irresponsible and sticking his naked dick into all kinds of stray pussies. She hadn’t said it just like that, but that’s basically what she had meant. And Dre’s stupid ass had stood up there and acted like he had never heard of safe sex. If he kept going like he was going he was gonna catch something. The way he was running through females he’d probably get up one morning to take a piss and his dick would just fall off and splash in the toilet.
“Y’all talkin’ all that shit about Thug,” Vikki said, “but let that niggah walk through the door and all a y’all damn pussies gone get wet!”
Even Rasheena bust out laughing on that one, and Carmiesha had to turn her head to hide her smile.
“Girl, you ain’t even lying,” Kathy agreed. “I ain’t never been with a man who could lay it on my ass like Thug do. He might not be worth shit when it comes to his kids, but that playa knows how to make a sistah feel good between the legs.”
Remy laughed and added, “You mean, feel good everywhere. I was hooked on humping Thug the first time he put his hands on me. The way that boy grabbed my ass and stuck his tongue down my throat…I could tell he could eat him up some pussy.”
“Damn!” Kathy said. “Just put the niggah’s business out there on the street, why don’t’cha?”
Vikki waved her hand. “What business? All of us done been with him, and all of us liked it. Thug got a way of making love like ain’t nothing in the world is more important to him than making you feel good. Shit, every chick wanna feel like that. I know I still do.”
“Me too,” Rasheena admitted. “I don’t have no problem getting a playa. But getting one who knows how to swerve until ya satisfied…that shit ain’t easy. I stay my ass in training mode with these so-called hustlers out here. If they worked on hustling that dick the way they hustled their street game they would know how to keep a honey worked and whipped. The last niggah who made me come with his dick was Thug.” She looked around at them and laughed. “Damn! Where that niggah at when you need him?”
“Ask Muddah to call him for you,” Paula said. “She got his ass in check.”
Carmiesha had stayed quiet while they was talking all that shit about what Dre could do in bed, but now she spoke up. “Y’all know me and Dre don’t roll together like that no more. I been with Ya-Yo for a good minute, and I’m satisfied with that.”
“Girl, stop frontin’,” Remy laughed. “Ya-Yo cute and got a real job and all, but you know damn well he ain’t holding them legs up in the air and waxing that ass like Thug do.”
“Tell the truth, Muddah,” Paula teased her. “Just go ’head and tell the damn truth. That’s some good-ass
dick, ain’t it? If all of us can admit it, why can’t you?”
Carmiesha tried to hide her grin, but she couldn’t. She was long past hating on Dre for screwing so many females. He was one of those guys who you took one look at and knew he could fuck. He’d given it all up in the sheets for her, doing whatever it took to make sure she was satisfied. That’s just the kind of thug lover he was.
“Yeah,” she said, remembering Dre’s sexy-ass rhythm while his baby mamas grilled her and egged her on. “He aiight. The niggah know what he be doing.”
They all laughed with her, and as Carmiesha sat there talking shit with them she realized that even though Dre was a big ho, his babies had brought them all together as sistahs and she liked that.
“Hey, Muddah,” Kathy said, changing the subject and breaking the mood. She’d been busy looking around the shop the whole time they were talking. “If I go to beauty school can you hook me up with a job when I graduate?”
Carmiesha nodded. “Hell yeah, I will. And you ain’t gotta wait until you graduate to work for me, neither. The day you go downtown and get yourself enrolled in class, that’s the day I’ll hire you as my shampoo girl. Right on the spot.”
Chapter 19
After busting my ass to get to Harlem just to find out my moms had already been buried, I went back to school a few days later. Smoove had cleaned out most of Noojie’s apartment while he was there, and Muddah said she would have some young heads take the little bit of furniture down to the curb and give away whatever was left.
Coach acted pretty cool about everything when I got back, but I knew it was only because Noojie had died. If I had brought him that rape shit by itself, he woulda had a lot less mercy on me and mighta even made me forfeit my senior year. Everybody at school was talking about that shit too. They was saying the jawn freaked out and called the cops cause all her sorority sistahs started ragging on her and calling her a stank ho for fucking half the basketball team.