“Yeah, I think you should rest for a while—”
“I don’t recall asking for your dumbass opinion, Kei-Kei. You went into the kitchen and chopped it up with that bitch, and now your loyalty is to her. Is that how you’re rocking?”
“Hell nah, it’s not even like that.” She could feel her temperature rising at Temper questioning her loyalty. She knew her best friend was living a nightmare. Nonetheless, Kei-Kei had to be her. She’d be committing fraud on herself if she let the slick remarks slide and said, “Bitch, you’ll never find anyone as loyal to you as me, so put them weak-ass feelings back in yo’ pocket. I’m telling you to stay here because you need to. Big Trice stayed in the hospital for two days after having OG Casper’s baby, remember? We stole the diapers from the pharmacy and brought them to the hospital the day after she had the baby. If you say this is the hospital, you need to stay at least another twenty-four hours to get your shit together. Where are you trying to go anyway? I hope not to your granny’s house. That shit is filthy and full of junkies.”
Temper knew where she would be going when she left Lena’s. Still, her plan wasn’t for Kei-Kei’s hungry ears. She had enough of the life she was given and was ready to trade what she had for anything that looked better. Temper knew Kei-Kei loved her through her anger, and the only way she’d let her leave this house was by fighting her. Temper had energy, just not enough to use getting her ass whooped. However, she wasn’t a match for Kei-Kei’s heavy hands even when her strength was at its max. Temper was the brains in their sisterhood, and Kei-Kei was the muscle. She sat back down, not wanting to get fucked up.
“Well, damn, can one of you help me wash my ass? It smells like a fish market murder scene in this bitch.”
Kei-Kei laughed, then hollered, “That’s my bitch!”
Chapter Two
The longest day of the year had finally ended. One of the little homies drained the inflatable pool while another extinguished the grill. They’d do it all again the next day. The small gathering of the Low Bottom Rollin’ Twenties Crips was moved from the backyard to the house except for those with less than OG to triple OG status. They were the little homies. They weren’t invited inside, and they wouldn’t be.
“Ay, cut that music off,” Casper yelled after slamming down the last blank domino on the table. He locked the game, which was in his favor, but he knew the game playing was over when he saw the figure standing near the back door.
“Didn’t I tell you niggas to page me about shit like this?” The voice was low and husky, yet it still managed to be calm and inviting. The shooting from earlier in the evening not only echoed off the gymnasium where the girls hid but off the houses and the lips of everyone who heard. The news traveled until it reached the ears belonging to the man in the shadows of the room, a man everyone in the house feared.
“I knew you were at work, cuz, so I told them niggas to wait,” Casper responded, seeing that no one else in the room wanted to.
“So you’re the nigga with authority to trump whatever I say? You calling the shots now, Casper?”
“That’s not what he meant—” Big Trice started to explain, and the voice yielded her silence.
“Muzzle yo’ bitch. As a matter of fact, all of you bitches, leave.”
Before the order was in place, the room was frozen as if they were playing freeze tag. However, the heat in the man’s words instantly thawed it out, and the women left with haste.
“Are you going to answer me, or do I need to call your bitch back? She seemed willing to talk to me.”
The Crips who remained exited the room one at a time. They knew better than to act as flies on the wall while the supreme chief chopped it up with his chief enforcer.
“Man,” Casper murmured once the room was clear. “Nah, I only got the authority you gave me, big homie.”
“That’s right. I knew you were smarter than that. So now that everybody knows that there was a shooting in the hood but no cars smashed off and no bodies were found . . .” He paused for a dramatic second and then said, “I hope! Tell me what happened and how you handled it.” The figure lurking in the dark materialized with each step. It too was void of color. He was big, black, and beastly both outwardly and within. A goon. A monster. A living beast.
“What is there to tell? Those fools you fuck with from Pomona pulled up asking to buy a couple of bricks, but their money was funny.”
“Funny how?”
“It was short a stack, and they tried to play us by stuffing dollars in between the C-notes to make the grip look proper. I guess they thought they could get one over on us since you don’t be counting the bread they give you.”
Casper wished he could take back his words as soon as he said them. Anger over the disrespect shown to him and his baby mama had taken over his words, and he was sure they had just cost him his life. When he woke up thirty minutes later to the taste of his blood on his lips, he was thankful that his OG decided to give him a pass by knocking him out instead.
* * *
Temper locked herself in Khasema’s room with Kei-Kei by her side for eight hours. Lena wasn’t allowed in, nor was the baby. She didn’t want to see her son again, and if they wanted her to rest, they had to abide by her rules. It wasn’t the first time Temper lay in Khasema’s bed for hours. Experience had taught her to dodge the springs that poked through his full-size mattress whenever she shifted for comfort. Still and all, to Lena’s knowledge it was her first time, and to keep the peace, she’d keep it that way.
“You don’t have to stare at his bed like that. I change his bedding once a week out of habit,” Lena told her, trying to wipe the concerned expression off her face.
“Good, then you shouldn’t have a problem with changing them out again,” Temper exacted and stood against the wall to give Lena space to refresh the bedding. The bedding hit the floor in a quick snatch, revealing the stained mattress.
Kei-Kei waited for Lena to retrieve the replacements before saying, “Ugh, it looks like he pees in the bed.” She was joking, but Temper didn’t join in.
She hadn’t heard Kei-Kei’s words. She was staring at the mattress. Who else did he sneak in his mama’s house to fuck? Temper wondered, remembering the nights she had to stand on the water meter to climb through his bedroom window. That man deserved an Oscar for his role in their relationship. In the streets, he treated her the same as he treated everybody who moved work for him. She was the dealer, and he was the supplier. Aside from that, when they were together in the safety of his room, Khasema made Temper feel as though she was the only one for him. Not at the beginning of whatever it was that they shared. At the start of their sexual relationship, he’d get her to suck his dick. Then he’d strap up, bend her over, catch his nut, and then put her out. After two months of sneaking her in nightly, the condom usage stopped, and he’d lay face down in her pussy for hours.
Contrary to how he treated her outside of the house, he’d eat her ass to prove that she was his one and only. Though he never said it, there were strong feelings brewing. He stopped fearing the consequence that could follow from planting his seeds in her and began going to sleep with his shovel in her hole after sowing, with Temper cuffed in his arms. It became the only way he preferred to sleep. Temper wouldn’t admit she had feelings for him, and if they ever showed without her giving the okay for them to, she’d go fuck a random homie to shake the shit off. No one knew their nightly routine, and that included Kei-Kei. The only information Kei-Kei knew was that they’d fucked twice, which was one time too many for Temper’s liking.
* * *
She’d spent the last eight hours in his bed, reminiscing.
“Hey, Tee, what time is it?” Kei-Kei yawned.
Unlike the hell Temper went through being raised by her alcoholic, always-gambling grandmother and crackhead uncle who was one step away from pushing a grocery store basket, Kei-Kei had both parents under her roof. Her father, Big Keith, was a retired gangbanger and former dope dealer who’d gotten his s
hit together. Rumor had it that he’d had kingpin status since birth due to sharing the same DNA as one of the founding members of the Crips. Now he was a paper-pushing supervisor at the oil refinery out in Long Beach. He did a lot of traveling up and down the West Coast and back and forth from California to Texas. His constant traveling for work worked in Kei-Kei’s favor because her absence would go unnoticed by him. She wished that were true for her mother.
Her mother, Bridget, wasn’t hood born and raised. She was a black girl raised in the affluent suburbs of the San Fernando Valley, who fell in love with a thug through letters, collect calls, and multiple visits to the Men’s Central jail. Her best friend, whom she met in high school, lived in South Central L.A. and rode the school bus to Woodland Hills every day to attend school. It was she who encouraged Bridget to write to her boo’s cellmate, and surprisingly to both Big Keith and Bridget, they had fallen in love through letters. Upon his release, Bridget made him promise to tuck his flag away and find employment that required him to clock in. Despite her effort to promote change, she forgot to enforce his move out of his hood. Keith was blessed to have been grandfathered into his mama’s house at her death, allowing him to inherit her Section 8 voucher.
You don’t throw away almost-free housing, and Bridget knew this, so she didn’t push the issue of him contacting the powers-that-be to request to relocate. Although the shit she had to put up with wasn’t worth holding on to the address. The neighbors aimed to disrespect her at every opportunity. They called her all kinds of four-legged bitches, three-hole whores, and two-dollar tramps, but only if they were sure that Bridget could hear them. It wasn’t because she articulated her words well or that she was the only woman in the area who held multiple degrees. The dislike for her was because Bridget was the sore thumb. She never attended anything in the community, not the neighborhood barbeques, the food drives, and especially not the Hood Day festivities.
Due to her standoffish behavior, everyone assumed she had her nose turned up and thought she was better than everybody else. Her arrogance made everyone uncomfortable around her, and if the police happened to show up uninvited, the neighborhood assumed that she had covertly supplied them the invitation. Bridget knew she was the cold chill to those protected under the community’s blanket of security, and she didn’t give a fuck. A small part of her enjoyed the way they perceived her. It stopped the locals from bringing bullshit to her doorway.
For eighteen years, Bridget made the hour-and-a-half commute to teach African American history at California State University at Northridge. The commute to and from work was the only time she was outside unless she needed to make an unexpected trip to the local grocery store, which she dreaded. The produce catered to easily pleased farm animals instead of humans, and she hated bumping into women she knew couldn’t stand her.
Bridget made it a priority to keep her daughter from being dragged into the hood life. However, with Kei’Lani being the daughter of the most beloved Crip in the area, it was more of a battle than she had foreseen. After watching her daughter transform into a hood chick after her transition from elementary to middle school, she had her daughter bussed to the Valley to attend high school, hoping to undo a portion of the madness she picked up. The education was better with the two-hour bus ride Kei’Lani had to take. The goal was to have her in a more diverse environment. Secretly, she wanted her daughter to see that she could make decent friends, unlike the gutter rat Temper she held so near and dear. Keeping Kei’Lani away from Temper was another battle she hadn’t foreseen, and she knew if she interfered with the girls’ bond, she’d be at war with her now-smart-mouthed teenage daughter.
Kei-Kei didn’t want to be the first to mention that it was three o’clock Sunday morning and that if she didn’t show her face soon, her mother would send the police. She didn’t have to. Temper was already two thoughts ahead of her.
“Kei, you know your mama is going to be on that bullshit if you don’t take your ass home soon. I already told you my granny said the next time your mama sends the police to her house looking for you, she was going to put her nine to her head.” Temper chuckled as she rolled up another joint.
“Yeah, I know. But look at you. You’re still in pain. I can’t leave you like this. You’re smoking more weed than Cousin Snoop at an all-you-can-smoke buffet in Jamaica. Why won’t you just take the pain pills she gave you?”
“Don’t play stupid. You already know why. Those shits have crack in them, and I’m not about to be nobody’s junkie,” she said, hitting her third joint in the past hour.
Silence captured the room as Temper remembered the last time she had seen the junkie she feared turning into her mother. She had been downtown school clothes shopping, better described as five-finger discount shopping, with Kei-Kei and a couple of other girls who followed them around the hood.
The day was going well. Temper had four new outfits and only came out of her pockets to pay for her shoes. The girls were munching on hard-shell tacos at Temper’s favorite spot when a man attempted to use the men’s restroom. The door was locked. He knocked and banged. Still, there was no answer. So he went to the cashier to get the key. The young manager repeated the man’s actions and placed knocks on the door before using his key. He received the same fate.
“I bet you your other taco that the bathroom ain’t empty,” Kei-Kei taunted Temper.
“Here you go, you fat-ass bitch. If you were still hungry, that’s all you had to say. I’m sure somebody is in there because that bathroom has a turn lock.” Temper slid Kei-Kei her extra taco and continued eating until the girls roared in laughter.
“That bitch is in there washing her nasty ass in the sink,” one of the girls screamed out, causing the rest of the customers to look.
It only took Temper a second to realize who the woman was. She tried to hide her face behind her taco wrapper, but it was already too late. Her mother was headed in her direction with only a pair of dirty, unzipped jeans on with no panties while she struggled to button up her shirt to conceal her braless raisin-shaped breasts.
“Temper, baby, is that you?”
Temper knew all the girls sitting with her had their jaws dropped and eyes on her.
“Hey, baby, how are you? How’s mama doing? I see you have a lot of bags. You’ve been shopping?”
Temper slid out of the booth as her embarrassment turned into anger. “Leave me alone, Dorothy,” she screamed.
“I haven’t done anything to you for you to be screaming like that. Can’t a mama say hi to her fucking daughter? Shit, you act like I asked for a hug or kiss.”
Temper had never disrespected her mother before, and unbeknownst to anyone, there was a part of her that hoped her parents would one day get clean and want her back. Sadly, the pressure of knowing her friends were watching was too much for her to bear.
“Bitch, I wouldn’t hug you if the president paid me to. Get your junkie ass out of my face.”
“Oh, I get it. These little bitches have you feeling yourself. Let me borrow five dollars, and I’ll get out of your face. I’m hungry, baby.”
Temper didn’t know her mother that well, yet she could see the truth mixed with hurt in her eyes. Her grandmother told her all her life to never give her mother money because it would go to the dope man. Without saying another word, Temper walked up to the register, ordered, and paid for her mother’s meal. She handed it to her as she made her way out the door.
“Thank you, baby, and I promise to pay you back. I’m going to a program that will help me kick the crack on Monday, and they will give me a place to stay and a job. Then I’ll be back to get you. Wait until I tell your daddy how big you’ve gotten. He’s going to be . . .”
Temper didn’t hear her mother’s last words as the door closed behind her. No one with her said a word until they were a block away, waiting for their bus to come.
“I can’t believe that was your mama,” the tallest of the girls said, hoping to get an explanation. Temper knew it, so she didn’t r
espond. It wasn’t until the youngest and supposedly hardest one in the group opened her mouth before anyone got a reaction out of her.
“I almost beat that junkie bitch down for calling us hoes. The only reason I didn’t is because I didn’t want her junkie blood to fall on me. I’m sure she has that hobo disease shit.”
The tallest girl laughed, and it was on. Temper leaped in superhero fashion with her fists out and popped her in the nose, off target from her mouth. The impact crushed most of the bones like solid ice in a bag thrown to the concrete before being poured into a cooler to chill the drinks. Blood spattered and then shot out from the hole at the top of her nose where the bone that didn’t crumble ripped through the skin. Seeing the gristle made Temple vow never to eat another piece of chicken down to the bone. When a drop of blood hit Temper’s cheek, she got lost in her rage. She reached for the girl’s shirt and slung her into the trashcan. The girl flipped over it and then fell to the floor.
“What the fuck were you saying about my mama, bitch?” she questioned as she kicked the girl from her forehead to her rib cage until her shoes were slippery from being covered in blood. “Talk that shit now, ho. I’m listening!”
Temper, consumed with stomping on the girl, almost missed the fight next to her. Being the ride-or-die friend Kei-Kei was, she put the tall bitch on her back with one punch that looked to have come from her soul and out of her fist for finding the shit funny.
“Why you ain’t laughing now, bitch?” Kei-Kei said, hovering over the girl like a shade tree. Once the girl realized she was on her ass, she lay there and pretended to be dead. That opened the invite for Kei-Kei to join in on the stomp fest her best friend had started.
If you were standing far enough up the street and watching the chaos, you’d think the girls were in a double Dutch competition as ribs cracked underneath their feet. They beat the girls up so severely that when downtown security guards arrived to break it up, their focus was on the lives of the battered girls. The diversion gave Temper and Kei-Kei time to escape before the security could dispatch the police. They must have run ten city blocks nonstop from downtown L.A. to the fashion district before they slowed down to catch their breath. The girls broke out laughing in unison as they pointed out the blood that covered them. Temper wanted to say the right words to Kei-Kei to show her appreciation without getting caught up in her feelings. Kei-Kei beat her to the punch.
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