“You sure? I can drop you off to wherever you’re trying to get to. You look a little sick.”
Beast wasn’t a person you comfortably said no to, nor did you freely decline his offer. Temper did her best to be anywhere that he wasn’t so she wouldn’t have to face that dilemma. Her day was off to a bad start.
“Yes, you know I live right there,” she said, pointing two houses away. “But I appreciate the offer.”
“No problem.” He rolled his window back up, concealing himself behind the darkness of the tint, and drove off.
Temper didn’t exhale until she made it to the gate that did anything except protect her grandmother’s house from outsiders. Thanks to her uncle Troy’s dope selling in the detached garage before he swapped it out for heavy usages, their yard welcomed the streets twenty-four seven like a hospital. The doctors were the dealers, and their patients were the dope fiends. Her uncle was an equal combination of them both.
“Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you to get home so you can front me a dime until the third when I get my check. Is that cool?” Wiggles begged excitedly, twitching and scratching at the sight of the young, foolish girl coming through the gate.
“Yeah, I’ll bring it out in a second.”
“Hold the fuck up. What’s wrong with you? You ain’t never said yeah that fast without talking shit or threatening me first.”
“You want the shit or not?” Temper snapped.
“Hell yeah, I want it.”
“Then shut the fuck up and wait for me to bring it out to you, damn.”
Wiggles sat down on the steps that led to the porch, reminiscent of a child on timeout. “I betcha I won’t say shit else!”
No matter how often Temper had served this lady, she could never get over how beautiful she was and could be if she killed the habit that was consuming her. Everybody had a story, and Wiggles’, as the neighbor nicknamed her, was one story that everyone knew. She had been a well-known blues singer from out of Chicago. The world knew her as Shirley Blu, and Shirley was everything every man wanted and what every woman wanted to be. Besides having a beautiful and powerful voice, she had a shape that most women dreamed of, and most men dreamed of being inside. Her skin tone was black as oil, making her brown eyes appear clear from the darkness surrounding them. She kept her short black hair relaxed and finger waved, and if she wasn’t in the mood to groom, she’d wear it slicked down like a seal.
Like most singers, she’d started off singing in the church’s choir. However, Shirley’s spin on gospel music was banned from the church’s doors and her parents’ love. As the pastor’s only daughter, she was an embarrassment and had to go. With nowhere to go except the streets, she began to sing at every bar, club, and pub that would give her enough money to get by. That exposure opened the doors to venues in New York and then all over the world.
Singing blues music to help deal with the pain of being disowned by the father she saw as a superhero wasn’t a strong enough fix. Nor was the brandy she began guzzling a pint at a time. After making it to the world-famous jazz clubs that laced Central Avenue in Los Angeles, she was introduced to her painkiller. Her choice of Novocain, the medicine that could numb away thoughts of her father, was the highly addictive crack cocaine. She dived straight into smoking the drug out of a glass dick simply because she was scared to snort it, and since Shirley found that she could come across it with ease in Los Angeles, she made it her home, buying a lovely house on the west side in Baldwin Hills. She frequently used the drug, and it hadn’t dug its deadly hooks in her all the way. At the time of her relocation, it had only pierced her skin, and then she met Troy.
Temper’s uncle Troy was what you would call an A-list dealer. He only supplied those who couldn’t afford the loss they would take if their dirty secret were to get out. He was summoned to supply a party Shirley Blu was having at her house, and as they say in the movies, the rest was history. Troy fulfilled her demands both sexually and chemically, and she fell in love. She moved him in instantly, which caused a downward spiral for them both. She preferred her fix out of a glass pipe, and Troy had only used the drug in sprinkles in the joints he smoked. Before they met, he wouldn’t smoke his weed heavy daily.
Nevertheless, he was now dating a musician, and he allowed the party lifestyle to wear its effects on him. The PP—party and perform—lifestyle had a seven-day schedule, and Shirley preferred to be high to get through it. It wasn’t long before Troy never had enough dope on him to supply his buyers, seeing that the couple’s personal stash had tripled in size.
Once he was out of the dope game completely, his income stopped. Shirley kept them high by performing for years until the drugs’ effects ruined her voice and stage presence. Once that happened, vendors began turning her away for being too high to perform. Slowly, the tangible riches that covered her became the property of the pawn shop and whatever dealer was willing to give her the most dope for the items. She sold her house and downsized to an apartment for them, and eventually they were evicted for nonpayment of rent. Troy moved the now-married couple into his mother’s house, and after robbing a mom-and-pop store at gunpoint unmasked to furnish their habit, he landed himself in prison.
As for Shirley Blu, having her poisoner locked behind bars, she tried to get herself clean. It would have worked if Temper’s mother, Dorothy, hadn’t been fighting the same monkey. Dorothy introduced her to the world of prostitution for a fix, which eventually forced Temper’s grandmother to put her daughter out. Her grandmother blamed her son for Shirley losing everything and allowed her to stay, pledging that she had a roof over her head for life.
Temper knew the story and felt that same guilt her grandmother carried on her shoulders. Not because of what her uncle had done solely. Her mother’s involvement collected its toll. She never layawayed drugs with anyone besides Wiggles, and fronting her always came with an explosion of her talking shit. Only today her response was different. Wiggles tried to help with Temper’s upbringing since she was the only other female in the house, though oddly and inexplicably, Temper only accepted the not-so-bright advice of her uncle Troy.
“You look like shit, and I’m sure you smell like it. How many times do I have to tell you to at least come home to wash your ass daily?” Her grandma Jo knew the clothes she was wearing weren’t the same ones she saw Temper leave in two days ago. She used the harsh words to let Temper realize she had been worried.
“My ass is clean, and I’m just tired,” Temper returned.
Jo had been sitting in her favorite recliner, smoking a cigarette and attending church via television. She was wearing her Sunday best, which was a throw dress, which had to be fastened with safety pins to keep it closed because the zipper broke long ago, and worn house slippers that she wore out of the house more than inside. Jo replaced her cheap gin with a bottle of Seagram’s, which meant she had taken her weekly turnaround bus ride to the Indian reservation to gamble and must have won.
“How much did you hit for? I see you’re drinking top-shelf this morning.” Temper laughed, and her grandmother gave her a crooked smile. However, it was a smile nonetheless.
“None of your goddamn business, Chinaman, that’s how much I hit. I’ll never trust a set of tight eyes on a two-legged bitch!” She dug in her bra and retrieved a hundred-dollar bill, except she didn’t pull it out. She balled it up in her hand like a dirty piece of Kleenex and cased the room for her son. “Did you find out how behind in school you are like I asked you to?” she yelled, still casing the area, then urged Temper to come to her with her free hand’s index finger.
“I already told you how far behind I am. I stopped going to school the second semester of the tenth grade, so that means I’m like three and a half years behind or close to that.”
Jo shook her head, “You dropped out of school to sell drugs and don’t even know simple fucking math. That makes your stupid ass a year and a half behind. I hope you count your dope money better than you figure out everyday numbers,” s
he said, sliding the money from her hand to Temper’s before whispering, “I know you’ll be seventeen this Friday, so if I don’t give it to you now, I’ll be giving it to the bingo hall Thursday. Happy birthday.”
Temper thanked her in the same tone as Grandma Jo started back, “Your ass will be grown in a year, and you don’t have no type of education about yourself, and you’re too fucking hardheaded for the military, so what do you plan on doing? I’m already taking care of two grown, smoked-out muthafuckas. There ain’t no room in here for a third.”
“Man, Granny, I already told you I’m not living in this nasty-ass house at eighteen. I have a plan. You just don’t know it. I’ll be out of this raggedy piece of shit by Friday.”
“It’s a raggedy piece of shit because you three raggedy muthafuckas are in it. I’m sixty-nine years old, and I’ll be dead before I pick up a broom after y’all’s asses. My room is clean. If y’all want to live in filth, that’s your choice.”
Temper reached in to kiss her grandmother on the cheek before disappearing to her room as she always did. The small action made her feel dizzy, and her grandmother caught it.
“What’s wrong with you, girl? You’re pale. Well, more pale than usual for your Cambodian ass, and you can’t even stand up straight. What kite are you flying on? I knew it was a matter of time before you joined those cart pushers on that glass dick.” She turned her bottle up and reached for another cigarette.
“I’m fine, just a little tired.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that not having color in your face meant you’re fine. Whatever lie you want to feed me today is fine by me. Just don’t forget you’re supposed to have your non-rent-paying ass out of my house by Friday, little girl. Now get up out of my face. You’re interrupting my service.”
Temper held up a missionary finger and laughed as she went to her room. She prepared herself to stand on her tiptoes to retrieve the key she hid above her door. The key wasn’t necessary. The door was already unlocked and slightly cracked. Even before she peeked in, she knew what—or better yet who—she would find if she walked in. She wanted to watch her uncle in action before she did.
Troy had fucked her room up in his search for money and was in the process of cleaning it up. He worked hard to cover his tracks besides the way he arranged her pillows on her bed. They would have given his intrusion away if she hadn’t caught him red-handed.
“You’re lucky I just tossed my heat, or I would have put a bullet right in your ass,” she said, pointing her index finger with her thumb extended like a gun at his ass. He was bent over in her closet, lining up her shoes.
“You got a rat in here. I watched his dirty little ass go from the kitchen straight under your door. I told you about keeping food in here,” he lied, trying to play it off.
“You’re the rat, nigga. What did you steal out of my room this time? Empty them pockets, junkie.”
“I didn’t steal shit. I told you that was Shirley who broke in here the last time. I was in here trying to help your ungrateful ass out with that rat,” he said, scrambling to his feet and pointing at a pair of K-Swiss that she hadn’t rocked in years.
“I bet. Now empty those pockets before I do it myself.”
“You stay with bullshit. What I look like stealing from you when I help Mama keep a roof over your head? I’m the nigga who taught you how to cook, cut, and package that shit up. I gave yo’ ass the dope game, remember?”
He started with his back pockets first, and they were already empty. Next, he flipped the lining out of the front two. He had about sixty cents in pennies and a lighter in one, and his crack pipe wrapped in aluminum foil and a piece of steel wool in the other. “I told you I didn’t have shit. There’s a rat in here, and I was trying to be a good uncle and catch it for you. Since you’re here now, you can catch his ass yourself and stop leaving food in here. I’m not going to tell your little bad ass again!” He made it through her bedroom door and down the hallway before she stopped him.
“Hold up. I need you to lift up that stinky-ass Boston Celtics T-shirt first.”
“I’m not lifting shit because I don’t have shit. Why are you always accusing me of being cutthroat? If I said I didn’t take anything, that’s what I mean.”
Yeah, yo’ junkie ass has something, she thought as she ran down the hallway and opened the junk closet’s door that stored everything in the house they no longer used and were too much of hoarders to throw away. The steel baseball bat was in arm’s reach. However, she decided to grab one of her grandfather’s golf clubs to add nostalgia to the beating she was about to give him.
“You better not swing that muthafucking club at me, Temper.”
As if his words gave her permission, she swung the 9 iron back and cracked him in the stomach with it. The impact of the club caused her hands more pain than it did her uncle’s midsection. The collision even made a metallic sound.
“Lift the fucking shirt, or the next swing will be aimed at your lying-ass mouth. I promise niggas will be calling you No-teeth T around this bitch when I’m done.”
“Mama, come and get your crazy-ass granddaughter. She’s high off that shit again and tripping.”
Grandma Jo didn’t make a move. She had seen the two at each other’s necks too many times to care.
“Y’all both high on that bullshit. I’m in church praying for y’all now. I’ll pass God the message,” she said, drinking another shot from her bottle. I wish they would just kill each other and get it over with, was what she thought.
Temper swung the club again, this time hitting him on his hip bone. The swing wasn’t as powerful as the first. The first had exhausted the energy she had, yet it still caused him to scream out in agony.
“Lift yo’ shirt, crack ho,” she yelled, and he did slowly.
Tears filled her eyes, and Troy took a few steps back. He knew stealing the item would break her heart. He assumed that, since she had it stashed in the back of her closet, it would be a while before she discovered it was missing.
“Hold on before you swing that fucking club again. I was going to take your great-grandfather’s medals to be polished. I promise I was going to put them back.”
It wasn’t the medals concealed in the box that caused the mist to form in her eyes. It was the gold hunter-case pocket watch that hung on its Albert chain that did. The dented watch belonged to her great-grandfather, and not only was it a family heirloom, but it was also a constant reminder that their bloodline meant to exist.
The solid-gold watch had saved her great-grandfather’s life. It gave him his freedom to flee from France’s control of Cambodia. He was considered a radical for his blatant disrespect for the French leaders. He wasn’t a fan of Cambodia being a protectorate of the French because times had changed, and with the growth of the country, he felt it was time to let Cambodians run it themselves. The supposedly secret rallies he held landed him a meeting in front of Indochina’s leaders. He was sentenced to death. After several months of imprisonment, he was privately walked into an abandoned rice field in Asia and received a single shot to his chest. He was left for death to take his soul and for his flesh to become one with nature.
After all their efforts to kill him, it didn’t work out that way. The watch he stole from the French guard to use to barter with if he could ever escape had saved his life as it accepted the bullet for him. He didn’t have a wife or children yet, and now he vowed to. He knowingly disobeyed his teachings of Gautama Buddha by failing to purify his conduct when he stole the watch. The stolen item showed him that he was meant to have the life he had been given, and he pledged to obtain both.
He married as soon as he made it into the northern half of Japan, and the irony was that he had four daughters, no sons. It wasn’t until he was on his deathbed that he discovered his Japanese wife, twenty years younger than him, had given birth to their first and only son. He left instructions for the watch and legacy with his daughters to pass on to his wife post-labor, and then he died almost instantly, ma
king those instructions his final words to his children.
The watch had made its way down the generations as Temper’s grandfather tried to do away with his Japanese blood by marrying a Cambodian woman, who gave birth to only one male child—Temper’s father, Davi, which meant Angel. Wanting more than what Cambodia had to offer post-Vietnam, Davi moved to America and made California his home. While working a random cleanup job on the east side of Los Angeles, he met the brown-skinned goddess Dorothy, fell in love, and married her. He provided the sperm that created Temper right before his love for the white substance swallowed him whole, and he found himself stuck in the belly of the crack beast.
His love for crack gave him more pleasure than exploding in Dorothy’s warmth. He still made love to his wife from time to time. It wasn’t until she went into prostituting full-time that his dick no longer reacted to her. The pleasure of his wife came from the drugs she provided. That was before he dived through the belly of the beast and was shit out through his death, a death caused by a drug dealer tired of waiting for his money. He passed the watch down to Temper. He knew the legacy, and the second chance for the men of his bloodline to make right with Buddha stopped with him.
The history behind the watch wasn’t the reason her heart was heavy at Troy’s thievery. It was what she held inside the hunter casing that did. She pushed her uncle into the wall as she ran to her room and emptied the case onto her bed. She placed the watch into the palm of her hand and sat on her bed as she opened it. The picture of her pregnant mother and stale-faced father outside of the late Marvin Gaye’s residence following the singer’s fatal shooting was still where she had put it. It wasn’t a happy picture of her parents. They weren’t high like she had always seen them, yet it was the only picture she owned of all three of them together. Drugs won ownership of her father’s flesh and her mother’s mind. Dorothy refused to admit that her husband was dead, and whenever she was around Temper, she’d make up a story for his absence. Crack killed her parents. All she had left of their lives together was a memory captured in a picture from before she was born. She was lost in the image and didn’t know Troy had followed her until he sat next to her and spoke.
Carl Weber's Kingpins Page 5