“Naw, Tyrus. I done told you I ain’t interested.”
Disappointed he couldn’t get his mother to sober up so he could talk to her like she had some sense, Tyrus lost his temper altogether. “I’m done with you. Do whatever you want from this point on. Smoke crack, drink yourself stupid, run the streets ’til the sun comes up and goes down again. I’m tight on you!”
“I don’t need you no more, nigga.” Dawn got loud with her son. “JoJo got me. He the only one who look out for me.”
“JoJo?” Tyrus set the bowl of noodles on the table. “What you mean he got you?”
“Don’t worry about what I mean.”
“I know he ain’t give you none of that work!”
“I don’t want none of them pills y’all boys got.”
“Then how he got you? I’m confused, so put me up on some game.”
“None of your damn business, boy, but just know JoJo and me is tight now. We got our secrets!” Dawn smiled, showing her yellow teeth; then she passed out cold.
“Okay, then, we’ll see how tight y’all is.” Tyrus stormed out the door.
* * *
Dang, I swear I don’t wanna hear her mouth whenever she gets home! Why did I jack all that dough on stupid shit? JoJo paced the floor persistently in hopes of coming up with an immediate solution to ensure Yanna wouldn’t be on his back about her money. His plan to go up to the school and push some pills failed miserably. Apparently, there was a bomb scare that morning, and extra security was called in to patrol the inside of the building and the outer perimeter. The high school was on total lockdown. There were a couple of suited-up security guards who had everybody annoyed, including JoJo. He felt it best not to push his luck. The last thing he wanted to do was end up in jail again and owe his moms even more money; that was, if she would take any more time out of her hectic “good time” schedule and even show up to bail him out. Plus, he didn’t want to run the risk of running back into Keys before he got shipped upstate to the penitentiary. JoJo knew that dude wasn’t playing.
Craving another drink to fight the demons that filled his head, JoJo retrieved a bottle of Absolut his mother kept on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet behind her good set of dishes for so-called emergencies. I need this right here so I can figure this madness out. He twisted the top off and took it to the head for a quick swig, but then he was stopped by a series of hard knocks at his front door. The thunderous barrage of bangs increased. First came three hard-fisted knocks, then several more.
“Yeah, who the fuck is it?” JoJo was still hungover from the day before. That, combined with the swig he’d just taken to the head, had him feeling all messed up in the head. Not thinking clearly, he grabbed a pistol he kept tucked underneath a sofa cushion. Gripping the small, hair-trigger revolver he’d traded for a few pills to a desperate customer from the suburbs, he took a deep breath, asking again, “Yeah! Who that? I said who the fuck is it?”
“Yo, it’s me, dude. Open the fuck up,” Tyrus shouted as he pounded his fist against the wood door once more as if he were the Detroit Police Department. He hit it once more, causing the frame to rattle.
Hearing who it was, JoJo set the gun, which made him feel extra tough, on the mantle above the fireplace. He happened to put it right next to an old family portrait taken back when his father was still alive, and life was simple. After staggering toward the door, he turned the knob, letting his homeboy into the house. “What up, doe,” he slurred to some extent, nodding upward.
“Hey, nigga, did you give my ol’ girl some money before you bugged out last night getting yourself arrested?” Looking his friend directly in the face, Tyrus, visibly livid, wanted a straight answer. “Because she tripping all the way out. She fucking gone off the deep end this time. Claiming y’all two is in cahoots.”
“What in the fuck? Naw, I didn’t. Why you say that crazy-sounding bullshit?” JoJo, who was far from being in the mood or mindset to care about anything dealing with Dawn Jackson and her ghetto mess, took another swig of the bottle of liquor.
“Because she got enough bread from somewhere to get high as three kites and she keeps mumbling something about you and her and some big secret, acting like y’all buddies.”
“Aww, damn, my nigga. Maybe before, when she copped me some Rémy and I let her keep the change,” JoJo nonchalantly recalled as though it weren’t a big deal.
“Yo, why you do that stupid shit?” Tyrus, out of nowhere, lunged at JoJo, yanking him by the collar and knocking the bottle out of his hand.
“Yo, nigga, is you crazy or something?”
“Naw, but that was foul.” He tightened his grip.
“Bitch, get off me! Is you crazy or what?” JoJo shoved him back, then straightened out the shirt he’d just taken the price tag off of earlier. “Why you going all in like that? You acting like I strung her out or some shit like that. How in the hell did I know telling her to keep the change was gonna be such a big deal? Wouldn’t you throw my old girl something if she asked or needed it? My bad.”
Tyrus regained his composure. “Damn, JoJo, you right. I’m sorry, guy, but I’ve been trying to wean her off that poison and convince her to get some help, maybe go to rehab. So when she got to talking that secret shit, I just knew she must’ve hit you up for some loot or pills or something.”
JoJo reached down, picking up the spilled bottle from the floor. Dazed, he took another sip of what was left. “You want some?” He extended the Absolut to Tyrus as sort of a peace offering.
“Naw. I gotta get back to the crib and make some phone calls about this house I’m trying to get. Besides, you need to put that garbage down before you end up fucking your kidneys up at a young age. You already looking fucked up enough.” He pointed, making reference to JoJo’s split lip and bruised face courtesy of the altercation with the cops. “The last thing I need is you and my moms both lifted, getting high!”
“Oh, Tyrus, I get it. So, you my daddy now too, huh?” JoJo started to zone out. His mind thought back to old Mr. Sims from across the street, trying to tell him what to do with his life just yesterday, as well as Keys.
Tyrus was trying his best to remain calm, but he was seconds from losing it again. “Look, man, I’m just trying to be a good friend. I’m trying to put you up on game, all right? I already done been down that road of drinking all day, tripping all night. You messing up big time. That’s all I’m saying. You need to get that shit under control.”
“Well, so what, Tyrus, you been down that road? You ain’t me and I ain’t you!”
“I know I ain’t you, but—”
“Yeah, but I just been through hell on earth.” JoJo finally smiled, realizing a quick solution to his money woes. “But you can help ya boy out until next week. I got a problem only you can help me with.”
“Help you out?” Tyrus was puzzled, wondering where this was about to lead. “Help you out with what?”
“Well, I’m gonna need to borrow some cash real quick to repay my moms for that bond she had to post. I got arrested yesterday, and she had to pay to get me out. Now she riding me about paying her back. You know how she be acting about her money! If I don’t pay her back as soon as she get home she gonna straight be bugging on that ill shit.”
Tyrus, who’d been on a mission of stacking dough since the day he and JoJo linked up, didn’t waste any amount of time stopping that notion from growing. “Look, I wanna work with you, but I ain’t gonna be able to do it. I got plans for all my bread. Now, I gotta bounce and make them calls. So I’m out! I’ll get at you tomorrow sometime.”
“Whoa! Hold up, home team. So it’s like that?” JoJo took a huge gulp, giving him more courage than usual. Angry, he tossed the still-open bottle across the room, spilling the remaining liquor out onto Yanna’s new, plush carpet. “Dawg, I know you got it! You ain’t spent no money since day one, especially on clothes.” Low-key, he was dissing Tyrus about his personal appearance.
“And so what’s your point about what I do with mines?” Ty
rus laughed as JoJo got deeper in his feelings.
JoJo, who was once intimidated by Tyrus and the rough street life he lived, had no problem whatsoever stepping to his supposed friend now. “My point is if it weren’t for me hooking you up from jump, you’d probably still be up there on the corner with that tramp mother of yours, dead broke!”
Tyrus was not naïve. He knew all of this bullshit with JoJo was because he was still feeling some type of way after they talked about his pops’s murder. That’s probably why he had all of a sudden found a new friend in the form of alcohol. Tyrus was trying his best to be mindful of all that and was trying harder than he normally would to overlook JoJo’s disrespectful statements.
“Look, guy,” Tyrus attempted explaining, “I’m saving all my money so I can get my mom into a rehab center and so I can rent a crib out in the ’burbs and get my mother out this neighborhood. I want to get her away from all the horrible memories that haunt her and me every day. It’s been hard for both of us over the years living around here.” Tyrus continued to let JoJo know why he wouldn’t and couldn’t afford to loan him any money, especially with the way his boy let money slip through his fingers like water. “Now, I almost have enough money saved and you know we’re almost out of product. So I can’t risk it.”
“So, it’s been hard for y’all, huh?” JoJo interrupted and stepped back, not believing what his boy had just said. “For real, though, are you serious? It’s been hard on y’all? If it weren’t for your mother being so hot in the ass seducing my dad back in the day, he’d still be alive, and things wouldn’t have been so hard on me. I’ve been the man around here since the night my ol’ girl came home from the hospital with my father’s belongings covered in blood! And, PS, no matter where you take your momma, she always gonna be nothing more than a slime-ball crackhead and a home-wrecking whore!”
“You know what? I’m gonna pray for you.” Tyrus flipped the script, coming out of left field with his response. “Going to church helped me not be so angry, and it can help you too. It can help you change, because you need to get your act together.”
“Look, dude. Been there, done that. The only thing that’s gonna help me is that money I need to give back to my mother. So, I’ma need for you to run me that bread and not run your big mouth.” He yanked forcefully on Tyrus’s arm then swung on him, hitting his friend dead in the jaw.
Having no choice but to defend himself, Tyrus fired back, delivering a strong uppercut to JoJo’s midsection, undoubtedly fracturing a rib. The harsh hit he suffered caused the inebriated teen to get weak and wobbly in the knees. Tyrus then followed the first punch up by a clenched fist in JoJo’s left eye. As chaos and pandemonium broke out inside Yanna’s house, the neighbors heard the loud commotion spill out into the street, and they called the police for assistance.
Consumed by a desire to not disappoint his mother, whom he’d die for, JoJo gathered his self-control and composure. Wasting no time, he charged like a bulldog at his friend once more, not wanting to take no for an answer. Enduring three additional swift socks in his face and landing on the floor near the fireplace, Yanna’s son, physically worn out and beaten down, saw no other alternative. Out of options, he reached up to the mantle and grabbed his pistol.
“Real rap, I said run that money,” JoJo repeated from the floor with fury in his tone. “I’m trying to keep it a hundred with you! My momma needs it, and I can’t leave her hanging like that! Now, Tyrus, I ain’t playing around with you no more. Run them pockets!”
“Run my pockets for what, JoJo? So ya moms can gamble it all away? Or so she can ride around in that new truck and stunt like she better than everybody else who live in the hood?”
“Well, if she does, it’s sure as hell better than smoking crack and running behind every dude who got a dollar in his pocket. Not to mention sleeping with the next woman’s husband ’cause she couldn’t find one of her own!” JoJo held his injured side with one hand and the gun with the other. “Matter of fact, where is your father at anyway? Or do that ho even know who he is?” He stood, grinning as the alcohol kept his words slurring. “Now, give me all the fucking money you got on you, nigga, or else I’ma take it by force. My moms needs it and I ain’t letting her down for shit!”
“Dawg, your mother ain’t no better than mine despite what you think or say.” Tyrus hyperventilated with resentment while staring down the barrel of the gun. “And my moms needs the money too!”
Tyrus took his chances bum-rushing JoJo, which resulted in both of the troubled teenagers crashing on the oak-framed coffee table. Then, rolling around in the sharp pieces of the shattered glass top didn’t slow the pair down. Taking turns being on the bottom, both suffering from deep cuts, the inevitable finally happened.
The deafening sounds of the revolver being fired twice echoed throughout the house. Tyrus and JoJo both lay motionless on the floor, one in shock from shooting his friend, and one in shock from being shot. The neighbors gathered around outside wondering what had happened behind the closed doors. With multitudes of police sirens in the distance getting closer, neither teen moved a muscle.
Minutes later, but after what seemed like an eternity to the boys, Yanna’s house was swarming with police, including the same cops who’d arrested JoJo the prior evening. After a short while, gawkers who’d gathered across the street watched the paramedics sadly bring out one of the teens on a stretcher, barely clinging to life.
Mr. Sims placed a call to his longtime neighbor, Yanna Banks, to give her the bad news. After informing her there had been some sort of altercation at her home involving her son as well as Dawn Jackson’s son, with Bible in hand he quietly prayed for the injured youth as well as the shooter.
Tyrus, badly cut up from the glass he and JoJo had rolled in, was totally distraught in a zombielike trance. As he was being handcuffed and led toward the squad car, everyone shook their heads. Word spread quickly of the shooting up to the corner store where Dawn, as usual, was begging for money for her next rock. She rushed down the block to check things out with her only son and provider. Most of the folks standing around gave Dawn cold, hard stares of contempt like they had years ago after Joseph Sr.’s death. Now, they blamed her for the actions of her son.
“That boy didn’t have a chance in life from the beginning,” one woman hissed so Dawn could hear.
“I’d probably shoot someone then myself if I were cursed with a mother like her,” another remarked.
A third person couldn’t help but join in. “Yeah, look at her trying to act all concerned. She’ll be getting high on that crack rock no sooner than they bend the corner with that bad seed of hers!”
Ignoring the cruel judgments the slew of nosey bystanders passed on her, as the squad car pulled off with Tyrus in the rear seat in tears, Dawn asked one of the policemen still on the scene exactly where they were taking her underage son.
“By the looks of the victim and the amount of blood he’s lost, your son is probably on his way to prison for the rest of his life, that’s where,” the officer nonchalantly replied.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Here and Now...
Lying on the stretcher, drifting in and out of consciousness while the doctor assessed his condition, JoJo started to panic. Suddenly he started realizing how serious his gunshot wounds were.
“Oh, God! Oh, God.” The numbness to reality caused by all the liquor he’d drunk was fast wearing off. The pain became excruciating and almost unbearable to the teenager. “Somebody get my momma! Get my momma! Call her.” He squirmed from side to side as the nurses tried restraining him to put an IV in his arm.
“She’s already here, son, so relax. If you relax, we’ll help you,” the doctor bargained with JoJo, who was just about his own child’s age. “Just close your eyes and calm down while we do our job. Just relax.”
How did things turn out like this? God, please help me make it! JoJo prayed, feeling the pinch of a needle in his arm and a hot burning in the pit of his stomach. I don’t wanna d
ie like my father! I wanna live!
For some strange reason, his thoughts stayed focused on Byron and the day he found out he’d died. JoJo relived the nonchalant manner in which his family behaved, as if his life didn’t count for anything except for materialistic belongings. He most definitely didn’t want to end up like that. He wanted to do something great with his life, something memorable besides selling pills on the streets.
He then remembered the words of Mr. Sims, about making his father proud, and Keys saying he should stay in school. JoJo knew for the past couple of months or so he’d been living straight-up foul, and all he could do now was pray that God was willing to give him a second chance. He couldn’t change his past or what led up to him getting shot up and fighting for his life, but he could change what he did if God was willing to let him walk away from here. It was now in God’s hands.
One thing JoJo knew for sure was that, if he lived to see another day, the first thing he was gonna do was to tell Tyrus he was sorry for his part in everything that jumped off, and he was 100 percent right. No matter what mistakes Dawn made, she was still his mom, and she should come first in his life, like Yanna was top priority in his. Both mothers had used them as a way to make ends meet, as their meal tickets, and that was wrong as hell.
* * *
JoJo, fighting to survive, was in the triage area and then surgery for what seemed like hours.
“It just don’t make no kind of sense to me. I swear you might as well have been the one to pull the trigger on that gun. You knew what that boy was doing in the streets, and you didn’t say or do anything to stop him. It’s your fault that baby is lying on that stretcher fighting for his life,” the old woman repeated once more, shaking her head at her niece’s recent bad parenting skills and lack of concern for her children.
“Don’t say that, Auntie Grace,” Yanna shrieked, her voice echoing throughout the hospital. “I’m a good mother! I’d never do anything to harm one of my kids, so stop saying that!”
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