by CJ Hudson
He immediately went on a search mission for some seasoned meat. The second he met Janice, he could tell by her quick interest in him that she had been dick deprived for a long time. Being the pimp he was, it didn’t take him long to sweet-talk her and get inside her pants.
“Hey, handsome. Can I buy you a drink?” she asked when she first met him at a bar.
“Yeah, why not?” he responded. “Let me get a gin and juice.”
Janice flagged down the bartender and ordered drinks for both of them. She had no idea that Steve had been watching her for about ten minutes before coming to sit next to her. She’d already hit on a couple of guys, but for some strange reason, they’d turned her down. As their conversation grew deeper, Steve found out why.
“You here by yourself?”
“Yep. Just enjoying the night out. What about you?” he asked.
“Well, to be honest about it, I’m looking for a man.”
And there it was. Whereas the men she’d been trying to pick up were just looking to have a good time, Janice was looking for something more serious. That was what had undoubtedly chased them away. But for what Steve was looking for, Janice was just right.
“Is that right? What a coincidence. I just happen to be looking for someone special myself,” Steve lied. “What’s your name, pretty lady?”
“Janice, and yours?”
“Steve. Nice to meet you,” he said.
That night, after taking her back to his place and fucking her brains out, she was his for the taking. He didn’t anticipate having the problems that he was having with her children, but that was fixable, especially since he planned to kill her son and make her daughter a part of his stable as soon as he got her mother in the fold. He was highly pissed that her son had put his hands on him, and he promised himself that he was going to make him pay dearly for it.
The first part of his plan was to get Janice strung out on cocaine, which he was well on his way to doing. He smiled as he thought about the look on Janice’s face when the cocaine took effect on her system. He chuckled lightly and almost wanted to hop up and pound his chest when he thought about how loudly he made Janice scream his name before he left. Steve’s dick got harder as he thought about how he’d hit the bottom of Janice’s pussy, causing her to beg for mercy.
Thinking that she was the cause of his hardening love muscle, the young girl who was sucking Steve off started moaning with pleasure. As Steve thought back to the nut he’d busted inside of Janice, he came in the young lady’s mouth. After getting rid of his plaything, Steve looked at his phone and cracked up. Janice had texted him twice, asking him if he had any more of the powder that made her feel so good.
* * *
When Tammy woke up, she was surprised to find herself lying on the couch alone. She rubbed her eyes and looked around. It took her a second to remember that she had spent the night at Bobby’s place. She didn’t know where Bobby was, but she had to use the bathroom in the worst way. She hopped off the couch and made her way to the bathroom. When she came back out, she was greeted by the smell of sausage biscuits and hash browns from McDonald’s.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Bobby said, smiling at her.
Still half asleep, Tammy waved her hand and walked over to him, smiling. “Thank you,” she said, taking the bag from him.
“How did you sleep?” Bobby asked.
“I slept okay. I’m surprised you didn’t try to take me into the bedroom and take advantage of me.”
“What? See, now you done offended a nigga. What type of dude do you think I am?”
“The kind who likes pussy.” Tammy wanted to kick her own ass after noticing the offended look on Bobby’s face. “Hey, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to imply that—”
“That I was a fucking dawg?” Bobby said, cutting her off.
Tammy froze. She didn’t know what to say. Seeing the look on Bobby’s face told her that it would probably be better if she left. All of a sudden, Bobby started laughing.
“I’m just fucking with you, li’l mama. And you’re right. I am the kind of dude who likes pussy. But the thing about it is I wanna get to know you on a whole ’notha level. I wanna know about ya interests and about ya likes and dislikes and all that corny-ass shit.”
“Corny? Why does it have to be corny?”
“Come on with that. You know that shit sounds corny as fuck,” Bobby said, laughing.
“Whatever,” Tammy said as she dug into the bag to get her food.
The two of them talked over their breakfast and thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company. All of a sudden, Tammy realized that she hadn’t checked her phone. She was so caught up in being with Bobby that she hadn’t even bothered to check if her brother or mother had tried to get in touch with her.
“I have to check my phone,” she told Bobby as she got up and walked over toward the couch. A look of concern came over her face when she saw that she had an urgent text message.
When Bobby saw the change of expression on Tammy’s face, he walked over to her. “Everything a’ight?”
“Oh, my God,” she said as she looked at her phone. Holding up one finger to ask Bobby to give her a second before answering his question, Tammy dialed Ivory’s number. When she didn’t get an answer, she left a message.
“Ivory, this is Tammy. I’m just now getting your message about Darnell. I’m so sorry, girl. Call me back when you get a chance.” After hanging up, Tammy told Bobby what had happened.
“Damn, that’s fucked up,” he said. “You okay?”
“I’m okay. I’m just worried about my girl. She and Darnell had an off-and-on relationship, but she did care about him.”
Tammy looked at her watch and decided that it was time for her to go home. She just hoped that she could go into her house without having to deal with the never-ending drama that seemed to always take place in her household.
* * *
Ivory parked in front of the house she grew up in and stared at it. It had been close to fifteen years since she’d last seen the place she’d been partially raised in. Now here she was about to go and visit the person who had caused her the most pain in this world. Ivory got out of her car and nervously walked toward the house. The closer she got to it, the more her legs threatened to give way. Ivory had to fight back tears as she approached. Her head was clouded with memories of neglect by her father and drug abuse by her mother. She was almost to the fence when she heard a voice call out to her from the street.
“Ivory! Ivory! Girl, is that you?”
Ivory turned around to see one of her mother’s friends walking toward her at a fast pace.
“Where the hell you been? I ain’t seen you since forever.”
“I been around,” Ivory answered. She looked at the old crackhead woman with her bottom row of teeth missing and instantly felt sorry for her. Ivory remembered when the woman used to come over to their house and play spades with her mother. The woman, whose name was Jamie, used to give Ivory money when her mother claimed she didn’t have any.
“How you been, Ms. Jamie?”
“I just been trying to live out here.” Jamie looked at the house and then back at Ivory. It didn’t take her long to figure out that Ivory didn’t know what happened to her mother.
“What?” Ivory asked after seeing the look on Jamie’s face.
“Uh, when is the last time you talked to your mother?”
“I ain’t talked to her in a long while. Why?”
“Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but about six months ago, your mother had a stroke.”
Ivory’s heart skipped a beat. Guilt suddenly washed over her. Even though her mother had pawned her for a hit of crack, she was still her mother. She suddenly started to wonder if she was wrong for holding a grudge against her mother all these years.
“Is she—”
“Oh, no, she’s still with us. She’s in that nursing home on the west side. It’s called Simpkins. You need me to write the address down for you?”
/> “Nah, I’ll just use the navigation system on my phone.”
“Okay. But if you plan on going to see her, you betta prepare ya’self. She don’t look too good. Yo’ mama ain’t never been a big woman, but now she really look small. I ain’t got to tell you what she was doing before you left. Hell, I got caught up in it my damn self. But when they put yo’ mama in that home after she had that stroke, she got depressed as hell. She wouldn’t even eat for the first two weeks, and then she started having crack withdrawals. She was already upset about being paralyzed on her left side, and the fact that she couldn’t get dope no more almost caused her to commit suicide. One of them nurses went into her room one day and caught her trying to cut her wrists with a butter knife. I’m telling you, if that knife were just a li’l bit sharper, yo’ mama wouldn’t be here today. She ended up having to get a couple of stitches as it was.”
Water formed in the corners of Ivory’s eyes. At that moment, she stopped hating her mother. All the hurt and pain that her mother had ever caused her rolled down her cheeks.
Jamie looked at the house where she used to visit her best friend. “Ah, Ivory, we need to move from in front of this house. It ain’t the same house you grew up in.”
Just as Ivory was about to ask Jamie what she meant by that, the door swung open. The man standing in the doorway looked almost the same as he did when she last saw him. His beard had grayed a little, and he had gained a little weight, but his facial features remained the same.
“Hey, Jamie! You got my fucking money?”
“Huh?”
“Huh, my ass! I asked you if you had my fucking money, ’cause if you don’t, you might as well get ready to get on yo’ knees, dirty girl!” Drake smiled and grabbed his crotch as he stared at Jamie. He never even looked Ivory’s way. “You got fifteen minutes to bring me my money, or you can get ready to put yo’ jaws to work!” Drake went back in and slammed the door.
“I’m sorry, Ivory. I gotta go. He don’t play about his money. Tell yo’ mother I said hi, okay?”
Jamie scurried back across the street. Although Drake didn’t pay Ivory any attention when he went back into the house, she knew exactly who he was. Her first thought was to rush into the house and attack him, but she was smart enough to know that would’ve been a death sentence.
“One day, muthafucka, one day,” she said to herself as she got back into the car. “Fuck,” she screamed after snatching the phone off of her hip and seeing that the battery was dead. She had been wondering why Tammy hadn’t called her back after she’d texted her the news about Darnell.
After she plugged her phone into the cigarette lighter, it immediately came to life. When it did, she saw that she had a message from her friend. She smiled and thought to herself how lucky she was to have a friend like Tammy.
She decided that she would wait until after she’d visited her mother to call Tammy back. She set the navigation system for the nursing home that her mother was in and was on her way.
* * *
By the time James dropped him off in front of his house, Hakim was exhausted. He’d been on the block all night, and while his body yearned for sleep, his pockets were filled with money.
“Ay yo, we killed the block tonight,” James bragged.
“I bet we made over five Gs.”
“You think so?” Hakim asked doubtfully.
“I know so! You see how fast them fiends was coming through? I’m telling you, we slaughtered that shit!” James peeled off $1,000 and passed it to Hakim. “Here you go. Shit, another few months of this hustling and we can start copping weight. Dru told me yesterday that when he get in good with his new contact, he gon’ see if he can get him to front us a couple of keys. Then we can all be eating real good.”
Hakim liked the sound of that. He’d already made close to $3,500 since he’d been hustling.
“I’m gonna call Dru and let him know that we need to re-up. If I get something, I’ll text you and let you know what time I’m gonna set up shop. You down to work tonight?”
“Let’s make this chedda,” Hakim said as he gave James dap.
Hakim jumped out of James’s car and headed for the house. He looked at his watch and smirked, knowing that he was supposed to be at work in less than an hour. He also knew that he wasn’t going.
“Fuck that punk-ass job,” he mumbled to himself as he walked up the steps. With his nuts drained from screwing
Ivory and his pockets full from grinding all night, the only thing on Hakim’s mind was getting some sleep in case he had to hit the block the coming night.
Just before he stuck his key into the door, Hakim turned his head toward the street and saw a truck pulling up in front of his house. His first thought was that it was Steve coming back with some of his cronies to get revenge. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Tammy get out of the passenger’s side door. It hadn’t occurred to him until that very moment that, between his beef with Steve and his hustling activities, he probably needed to purchase a gun.
After seeing Tammy hang an overnight bag over her shoulder, another thought occurred to him. Where the fuck she been all night that she need an overnight bag? Hakim tried to see who was behind the wheel, but Tammy closed the door too quickly. He knew damn well that Ivory wasn’t pushing nothing like that, so he figured that it had to be a dude.
“Who the fuck was that?” he asked as he walked down the steps and up to his sister.
“Why do you want to know?” she asked with an attitude.
Hakim ignored her as he watched Bobby bend the corner. “Well, whoever that nigga is, don’t get his ass fucked up.”
“Whatever,” she said, dismissing him with a hand wave. “What are you doing up so early anyway? Wait a minute,” she said after thinking about it for a second. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
Hakim just looked at his big sister and shrugged his shoulders. It was then that Tammy noticed the tired look in his eyes.
“Are you just now getting home?”
“Yeah, so what?”
“Please don’t tell me that you’ve been out there hustling with those derelicts I saw you with the other day.”
“Then don’t ask,” Hakim said as he turned and headed back up the steps.
“Oh, my God. Why won’t you listen?”
“Don’t start that bullshit again.”
“I’m just saying—”
“I don’t wanna hear it! Matter of fact,” he said as he turned and faced his sister, “that nigga who dropped you off? Where does he work?”
Tammy froze like a deer caught in headlights. She didn’t expect her little brother to come at her like that.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said.
Before their conversation could continue, Janice walked down the stairs, looking a hot mess. Her nose was swollen, and her hair looked like it hadn’t been combed in a month. She had a dreamy look in her eyes and a goofy smile on her face.
“Good morning,” she said as she passed between her two children. Hakim and Tammy looked at each other, totally confused.
Hakim lifted his finger to say something but shook his head. “Nah, couldn’t be,” he said.
“Well, she damn sure looks like she is,” Tammy said, knowing exactly what her brother was thinking.
“We need to talk to Mama. Ever since that bitch-ass nigga been coming around, she ain’t been acting the same. It’s almost like she love that nigga more than she love us.”
Hakim sounded angry, but Tammy could see the hurt in his eyes. She figured now was the perfect time to show her mother how much her actions were bothering them.
“I agree. Come on.” Both of them walked to the kitchen where their mother was making coffee. Tammy said, “Mama, we need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“I think you know.”
Janice walked over to the table and sat down at the table. “Look, you two, I don’t know how much clearer I can make this. Steve is my man, and I love him.”
>
“And we don’t have a problem with that—”
“Speak for ya’self,” Hakim interrupted.
“Anyway,” Tammy said, giving Hakim the evil eye, “like I was saying, we don’t have a problem with that. But it seems like, now that you’ve met this Steve guy, you’re treating us like dirt.” Truth be told, Tammy did have a problem with it. She just didn’t want to get their conversation with their mother off on the wrong foot.
“Dirt my ass, sis. She’s been treating us like shit!”
“Hakim, calm the hell down!”
“Fuck that!” he exploded. “She needs to decide who she loves more: us or that Johnny-come-lately muthafucka!”
Tammy shook her head at her brother and looked at her mother. A bad feeling crept into the pit of her stomach as an eerie silence hung in the air.
“You’re right,” Janice said. “I do need to make a choice. Please feel free to leave your keys on the table on your way out.”
Janice then stood up and went back upstairs, leaving Hakim and Tammy staring at each other, stunned beyond belief.
Chapter 28
“Bitch, hurry up. I ain’t got all day,” Red yelled into the phone. He ended the call, leaned back in his seat, and wondered why he was up so early in the morning. A sly smile formed on his face after remembering the reason. After spending half the night getting high and drunk with Hank, Dru, and Cedric, Red was even more pissed when his cell phone woke him up. He was still surprised that he could even hear it, considering the state he was in. As soon as he picked the phone up, he wanted to jump through it and strangle Nancy.
Here he was trying to sleep off the events of the previous night, only to have this broad call him, asking him to take her to work. His anger turned to elation when she told him that she would suck him off on the way there. Red wasn’t a fool, though. He knew that as soon as he got her to work, Nancy was going to start begging for some dope. He thought about the vicious head she’d given him before and agreed to pick her up and figured that it was more than a fair tradeoff.