Things with his household’s financial situation were looking more than dismal on one sunny afternoon when he walked up to his loyal customer’s two-story home. Anytime he would cut Byron’s lawn or trim the hedges, he never needed to bring his own equipment. Byron, a local drug dealer, had everything JoJo required in a shed located in the rear of the huge fenced-in backyard.
Byron wasn’t like the average dope dealer in the movies, callous and demented with no use for anyone other than himself. He sat on the back deck reading books to his small son as JoJo cut the grass. Byron also coached football for the Police Athletic League. Even though JoJo didn’t necessarily condone his over-the-top lifestyle and the way he made his living, he still understood the hustle and the grind. Life was hard in Detroit and whatever someone felt they were forced to do to survive and feed their families was understandable, even if it was illegal.
Noticeably, this day was different from most as JoJo neared the front porch as he did every two weeks. Outside of all the strange cars parked in the driveway, something else seemed out of the ordinary to JoJo. Even though Byron knew a lot of people in and around the city, he never had this much company at his house at one time. The few occasions when he did see any of Byron’s cronies, they were all pushing hotter whips than the ones that were now parked on the premises. It was like a used car parade.
“Um, yes, can I help you?” JoJo was rudely met by a middle-aged woman with a pile of men’s clothes gathered in her arms. “What do you want?” the woman firmly asked as if she was getting impatient with him for taking too long to reply.
“I’m here to do the yard work. Is Byron home?”
“Naw, he ain’t here, so don’t be expecting no money for nothing or no handouts,” she barked with her face twisted.
“Oh, he already took care of me, so it’s all good.” Byron always paid him for the entire month up front so even if, by chance, he wasn’t at home, the job would still be taken care of without JoJo wondering when he’d get his money. Hearing loud voices, JoJo tried to inconspicuously play it off and look over the woman’s shoulder. He was more than curious about all the noise and commotion coming from inside Byron’s usually quiet home. “I come every two weeks,” he added, still trying to investigate low-key.
Looking down at the growing grass then back over at the people inside, who were getting more boisterous as the seconds passed, the woman finally told JoJo to go ahead, cut the yard, and leave her alone. “Look, I tell you what, this is my house now anyway, and I don’t want it looking a hot mess. So, yeah, go ahead and do your thing. And hurry up.”
“Your house? Over my dead body,” one man holding a small box of what appeared to be DVDs yelled out the doorway.
“Mine too,” a female added her two cents. “He would’ve wanted me to have this house and that flat screen. I was his favorite cousin and y’all all know that.”
What are they talking about, their house? When Byron shows up, he’s gonna trip out on all these loud, crazy people up in his crib. Slowly heading to the rear of the house, a confused JoJo saw Byron’s baby momma, Jasmine, and their five-year-old son pull up. Jumping out of the car, Jasmine appeared to be infuriated. Good, here comes Jasmine! JoJo knew Byron’s son’s mother was no joke. Everyone had heard the stories of her practically beating down any females from around the way who even considered trying to get with “her man.”
“Hey! How y’all gonna be all up in the house like it belongs to y’all?” Jasmine huffed as she made her way up to the door, dragging her son by the hand the entire way.
“Girl, bye.” The woman who had been so rude to JoJo was being just as rude to Jasmine. “This here is family business and don’t concern you at all. You acting like you were his wife and not just another jump off after his money.”
“Well, this is his son, his blood, so that makes it my business,” Jasmine, with tears forming in her eyes, screamed back at the woman as she held on to her child.
By now, several people had come out of the house and had begun to congregate in the front yard. One by one, like tiny ants, they started loading clothes, shoes, televisions, and just about anything else they could carry from Byron’s home into their hoopties.
“Listen here, Ms. Thang, with ya uppity behind,” one other person spoke up, “real talk: unless you got papers to this or that”—she pointed around then planted her hands firmly on her hips—“then you need to step. Byron was our relative, so that gives us first grabs at everything in and around here!”
“Y’all so disrespectful it don’t make no sense.” Jasmine, now crying, shook her head in disgust. “He hasn’t even been dead twenty-four hours and y’all over here behaving like a pack of wild vultures!” Byron’s son started to cry as his mother shouted at his cousins, aunts, and uncles. “He couldn’t stand none of y’all when he was alive, so what makes y’all think he’d want y’all to have anything of his?”
“Oh, well, he ain’t here to answer that himself now, is he?” a cousin smartly replied as she carried three leather jackets in tow even though it was the beginning of summer. She then laughed, placing them inside of her open trunk. “Stop being a hater, Jasmine. You done got yours from my big cousin when he was alive; now we getting ours!”
“Yeah,” another supposed relative concurred, holding a microwave. “And, anyway, what in the hell is you doing here anyway? You and that illegitimate baby of yours live clean across town and not here with Byron. Obviously you just mad we beat you to the punch.” There was more laughter among several of Byron’s family members at Jasmine’s expense.
“Unlike all of you desperate bums,” Jasmine said in grief, with puffy, red eyes, “I’ve got keys to this house, and the property inside belongs to me! Y’all assholes over here stealing from a dead man instead of mourning his loss! Y’all off the fucking hook!”
Frozen in his tracks, JoJo realized that Byron was not just away for the time being, but that he was dead. Getting a hard knot in the pit of his stomach, he leaned against the concrete wall in denial. Since his father’s death, Byron was the closest person to the youth who had passed away. Even though they weren’t homeboys or running partners, JoJo and Byron had a mutual respect for one another, and he would definitely miss their semimonthly chats. Dang, I wonder what happened. Damn! JoJo let his emotions take over as he closed his eyes thinking about why people had to die, especially so young. Life ain’t fair.
Finally, after regaining his composure, JoJo went into the medium-sized shed and pulled out the lawn mower. Byron had paid him to do a job, and even though he wasn’t gonna be there on the back porch making him laugh, he still knew that he wanted to cut the grass one more time to fulfill his obligation.
As the loud sounds of the mower ripped through the yard, JoJo couldn’t help but overhear the shouts, screams, and apparent smashing up of items inside the house. While trimming the hedges, JoJo sadly noticed Byron’s small son who’d somehow wandered out of the house and was standing near the curb.
“What’s going on, li’l man?” he questioned the child.
“Nuttin’.” The boy shrugged his small shoulders.
“Tired of all the big people making noise, huh?”
“Yes.” He covered his ears, which were big just like his now-deceased father’s. “And I want my daddy!”
Before JoJo could console the small boy any further, remembering exactly how he felt the day his own father passed, Jasmine barreled out the front door with arms full of her and her son’s belongings that thankfully weren’t snatched up by Byron’s ill-mannered kin. After tossing the stuff in the rear of the car, Jasmine looked over at her son, who stared down toward the pavement to keep from crying.
“Come on, baby, let’s go before Mommy messes around and catches a murder case!” She snatched the distraught boy up by the arm, practically throwing him into the passenger seat, not even bothering to safely strap him in.
“You best get on,” one cousin yelled from the porch, watching Jasmine roar off the block, which was now crow
ded with onlookers from the neighborhood who’d gotten the word Byron had been killed the night before.
JoJo was pissed off to the eighth degree as he marched in the backyard and grabbed a broom to clean up before he left the premises for what he knew would certainly be the last time. When the teen was almost ready to leave, the same woman he’d first encountered when he’d arrived came out onto the back deck. With an apparent attitude, she walked out into the middle of the freshly cut grass. After seeming to survey his work, she called him over.
“Listen here.” She frowned. “I want you to take that lawnmower and all the rest of that stuff out of that shed and off my property! Do you understand?”
“Excuse me, miss?” JoJo wanted to honestly smack the cow mess outta the rude woman, but he was always taught to respect his elders, so he held his composure. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Everything ain’t always meant for you to understand.” She placed her hands on her wide, oversized hips. “That ugly shack is blocking the place where my new gazebo gonna go! Now, is you gonna clean it out and take all that junk with you, or do you want me to flag down one of these guys out here scraping? Which one is it gonna be?”
After only a brief moment of hesitation, JoJo happily headed over to the shed to gather as much of the newly acquired lawn equipment as he could onto a steel pushcart. Thanks, Byron. I know this is a blessing from you. Snatching off the ground a royal blue tarp that was thrown in the corner, he noticed something strange. Leaning over to inspect what seemed to be hidden in a cardboard box, he couldn’t believe his eyes as he crouched down.
Even though he was raised in a two-parent household before his father died, and he avoided the street life that tempted him on a daily basis, JoJo recognized what most would call a gift from the street gods. What in the . . . JoJo puzzled himself as he glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching or paying attention to what he was doing. I must be dreaming. I gotta be!
As he peeked into the small duffle bag, which had a broken zipper, he pulled out a manila envelope. Opening it, he saw it was stuffed with twenty-dollar bills, neatly arranged with all the faces to the front, and wrapped in red rubber bands. Under the envelope were several thick gallon-sized Ziploc bags with huge amounts of pills in each. Digging deeper, JoJo discovered another brown paper bag with a couple of plastic tubes of weed and a digital scale. It took him all of five seconds to figure out his next couple of moves.
Instinctively, having been born and raised the hood, the teen tucked the bag inconspicuously under one of the hedge trimmers. After looking back over his shoulder, he tossed the worn tarp on the cart and used a few bungee cords and old clothesline to secure the items down.
“Hey, boy,” the woman rudely shouted from the rear window, startling JoJo. “Hurry the fuck up and get off my damn property. And there ain’t no need to come back around here, either. I’ma get a real company to do my landscaping from now on out, not some inexperienced little nigga looking for a handout!”
“Yes, ma’am!” Quick to grant her wish, JoJo began pushing the cart up the driveway with one hand and the lawnmower with the other. Sweat started to pour down his face and in his eyes as the summer sun beamed down. After turning back only once to see if anyone from Byron’s house would change their minds about the belongings the woman just insisted he take, JoJo nervously took the side streets to get to his house.
Preoccupied with what he’d just seen in the shed and now had hidden on the cart, the “lawn boy” had totally forgotten about the other yards he was scheduled to cut. For now, they would have to wait. He had other things on his plate to deal with.
CHAPTER FIVE
Rushing the pushcart into the empty two-car garage, he unfastened the cords to retrieve the duffle bag. Wasting no time, JoJo raced in the side door of his house and straight to his bedroom. After turning the lock with the skeleton key, he closed his blinds and took the envelope out. He was still pretty much messed up in the head about Byron’s untimely demise, but this blessing that had fallen into his lap had him feeling anxious and excited. “This has got to be a dream or something. I can’t believe it. Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, a hundred.” JoJo took his time counting all of the money in the folder.
By the time he finished counting, he realized he was $5,300 richer. That was the most money JoJo had ever seen at one time. It was way over the total amount his weary mother, who often volunteered to work double shifts and overtime, brought home in almost three months. Amazed with his sudden cash windfall he’d recounted repeatedly, JoJo didn’t pay any attention to the bags of multicolored pills still in the duffle bag, or the weed.
“I’m gonna give half of this money to Ma,” he proclaimed out loud, “then buy a new pair of sneakers for me and Jania and another lock and chain for the garage.” He decided he’d take some time to figure out what he wanted to do with the rest of the money.
After spending all afternoon with a pen and paper, mapping out what to do with his half of the money, JoJo finally heard his mother come home with Jania trailing right behind. Before he could inform Yanna about his blessing, not to mention the tragedy of Byron’s murder, he saw the look of despair plastered on her face.
“What’s wrong, Ma?” He took two bags of groceries out of her hands and set them on the dining room table.
“My job at that tired factory just issued layoffs and, as you can see, your mother was one of the lucky ones who won’t be getting a minimum-wage paycheck come next week.”
Watching her ball up the pink slip and throw it into the trash, JoJo knew that it was his cue to save the day, so to speak. He dashed back to his bedroom, lifted his mattress, and grabbed the three stacks of money.
“Hey, Ma! Guess what,” he asked, excited, returning to the kitchen. “I got good news and bad news.”
“Please not now, JoJo baby.” She sighed, fighting back tears from getting yet another disappointment from life. “I forgot the sauce for the spaghetti. Can you please run down to the store and get a jar?”
“Yes, Ma, but—”
“Please, baby. Tell me when you get back. Your sister has to eat, and I have a major headache.”
“Not a problem, Ma. I got you!” Tucking the wad of cash in his front pocket, JoJo headed out the door and up the block to the corner store. The hardworking teenager never had that much money in his possession. He felt like a million dollars with every step he took.
Just when JoJo felt no one could rob him of his happiness, he bent the corner and ran smack into trouble. It was Dawn Jackson, the woman his mother blamed for all of their misfortune. Much to Yanna’s delight, Dawn was now the proud owner of a few new rightfully earned titles. Instead of a being labeled a slut, tramp, and home-wrecking whore, she was now the neighborhood smoked-out crackhead always in desperate need of a fix.
Dawn’s son, Tyrus, who detested the embarrassment of being birthed by such a female, was standing there as usual too. He was always trying relentlessly to get his mother off the streets. Every day he’d beg and plead with her to come home with him, but she never listened to her son. As fate would have it, she was not the slightest bit interested in Tyrus or any of his bright, life-altering ideas. Her life had gone from bad to worse ever since Joseph Banks Sr. had been murdered in her home years prior. The neighborhood’s longstanding residents had heeded Yanna’s warning. Dawn Jackson was ostracized and ridiculed by everyone who knew her now as well as back then. It was as if she actually wore the scarlet letter etched into her forehead. Ashamed and embarrassed by the way people viewed her, Dawn had turned to drugs to avoid facing her reality.
“Hey there, baby boy.” Dawn sluggishly slurred her words, not immediately recognizing JoJo. “I know you want some of this good-good right here.” She placed her boney hands on her hips and shook her body in a circular motion.
“Naw, I’m good.” JoJo was five seconds short of throwing up in his mouth as he looked his dead father’s ex-mistress up and down. He wondered what in the world his dad could
’ve seen in this crackhead to make him cheat on his mother.
“You sure about that, baby boy?” Dawn squinted while trying to comb her dirty fingers through her tangled hair. “I don’t need much to get me out the gate.”
“Yo, Ma, what in the hell is wrong with you?” Tyrus snatched her up by the elbow, jerking her to the side of the doorway. “Is you all the way crazy or what? What is you doing? Stop it!”
“Get ya hands off me, nigga,” she yelled at her son as JoJo disappeared into the corner store. “I could’ve got me a few dollars from him since you ain’t giving me nothing to work with. And I know you got it with your selfish ass!” She rolled her bucked eyes with attitude. “You out here hating on me and that boy was buying. I know you seen him staring at me like he was.”
“Shut the fuck up; damn.” Tyrus shook his mother yet again while slamming her against the store’s concrete wall. “Do you even know who the fuck that was you was out here trying to push up on? Do you? Huh? Do you?”
“What difference do it make to you if he got some money to give me? You always running behind me trying to act like you my daddy or something!” Dawn rubbed her shoulder as she snatched away from his strong grip. “I’m ya momma, nigga! You damn showl ain’t mine!”
Tyrus shook his head with contempt. “Why are you always embarrassing me? Ever since I was a kid around this motherfucker, it’s been the same damn thing! You need to get some help, maybe rehab!”
“I don’t need no help, Tyrus. What I need is some damn money, and that straightlaced-looking boy seem like he got some to give, so fall back.”
“Look,” Tyrus demanded of his mother, “when he comes outside, leave him the fuck alone and don’t say nothing else to him. You understand me? Nothing!”
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