Chubby blushed and began rocking back and forth on his toes just as he did as a kid. “You know how it is Jesse, I got love for everybody.”
Vonda intervened. She knew that Chubby had big respect for Jessica and always wanted to look good in front of her for some reason. “Don’t even try playing the Mister Good Guy role, Chubby. Tell her what you really do. Tell her how you got these niggas out here shaking in their boots whenever they see you. Tell her how you take these dealers’ shit and turn around and sell it back to them. Tell her.”
Chubby leered at his sister for telling Jessica his business. He faced Jessica and waved his sister off. “Jesse, don’t listen to what she say. I don’t do that no more. I kicked the habit, and I’m not in those streets no more.” He stood erect. “I’m legit now, a businessman. I own a bar.”
Vonda rolled her eyes and chuckled. “Since when did you own a bar?”
“See?” Chubby said with sarcasm. “It’s a lot you don’t know. I was just coming to your room to tell you before Jessica knocked on the door to ask you did you want to run it for me.”
Vonda observed him for a moment. She knew that her parole officer was riding her about getting a job and knew that this would be a perfect opportunity. “Don’t be playing with me, Chubby, because I ain’t in the mood for your bullshit.”
“I ain’t bullshitting you, Vonda. You know I don’t play when it comes to my business. I’m on parole too, and I needed a business so my P.O. would back the fuck up off me. ”
Both Vonda and Jessica stared at him for a moment.
“Oh, shit, Jesse,” said Vonda. “He’s telling the truth because he ain’t rocking.” Ever since Chubby was little, whenever he would tell a lie, he would avoid eye contact and sway and rock back and forth.
“You serious, Chubby?”
He smiled, pulled out a set of keys, and held them up. “As a motherfuckin’ heart attack. The Starlight Bar on 127th Street and Lenox.” He turned his attention to Jessica. “Jessica, you just got out, you want a job too?”
Jessica smiled, shook her head and said, “My Chubby Wubby,” and gave him a big hug.
When the three of them walked into Vonda’s room Jessica looked around and immediately grew emotional. It was exactly as it was when she was last there back in the day, and most importantly, when they were still young and innocent. She walked around the room in silence as she touched the posters on the walls, then the sparkling disco ball that hung from the ceiling. She then walked over to Vonda’s dresser and that’s when she saw the photographs of the four of them the night of the prom at her parents’ house with their dates. She suddenly thought of Kenny and thought about what could’ve been and put her head down.
“You ok?” asked Vonda.
Jessica nodded quickly. “I was just thinking about all the good times we had together in this room.” Jessica smiled. “Even the bad times with all the arguments and fights we had with Tiny. I wish we could go back there.”
Vonda and Chubby smiled as they thought back. Vonda watched her closely. “Jessica, I know you. What’s wrong?”
She looked at Vonda and then at Chubby and admitted, “It’s my brother.” She looked them both in the eyes and continued. “I found him yesterday and he looked real bad.”
Chubby put his head down as Vonda went over to her and put her arms around her as Jessica began to break down and cry.
“I cleaned him up and even convinced him to enter one of those programs, which I was going to take him into this morning. I even convinced my mother to let him stay over even after she said he was no good and that I was fooling myself.” Jessica paused and wiped her eyes. “We went to sleep and my mother woke me up in the morning and he was gone, along with all the money I had in my pocket.”
Chubby quickly reached in his pocket and pulled a stack of money and offered it all to her. Jessica quickly declined the money, waving it off.
Vonda said to Chubby, “No, Chubby, she don’t need your money. She got plenty.” She went to her closet and pulled out a shoebox and placed it on the bed. She pulled out a thick white envelope with Jessica’s name written on it and handed it to her. She started to decline and but Vonda said, “One for all and all for one. Now it’s too damn hard out here to walk around Harlem with no money, so either take this or get on welfare and cash in your food stamps for seven dollars cash for every ten-dollar stamp. Your choice.”
Jessica stared at Vonda’s smiling face and then lowered her head. “What about Lynn and Tiny
Vonda frowned, “Them bitches got their money the first day we got out without missing a beat. Tiny already burned her cash and be hitting me up nearly every day cause she still on that shit. Lynn went back to being Lynn and all she does is buy clothes and get her hair and nails done trying to impress everybody, male and female, if you know what I mean. But at least she found a job and she’s working at Macy’s full-time now. So she’s doing ok.” She handed the envelope to Jessica and she accepted it. “What you need to do is find yourself an apartment like I’m about to do.”
Jessica shook her head and responded, “No, not right now.”
Vonda frowned and asked, “Well, why not? That building that you living in is a crack house. You’d be doing yourself a favor.”
Jessica shook her head again and said, “No, I can’t leave my mother there. It’s too bad in there. I already got into a beef with these dudes from the building and I got to see it through.”
Vonda was taken aback and asked with concern, “Beef with who, Jessica?”
Jessica shrugged her shoulders. “I beat these boys with a baseball bat and told them not to sell drugs in my building again and they threatened to come back.”
Chubby came alive as his face contorted with rage. “What did you say, Jessica?”
Vonda couldn’t believe what she heard and said with anger, “No, you didn’t, Jessica. You could have gotten yourself hurt! What if one of them had a gun or something, what would you have done then?”
Chubby reached in his waistband and pulled out a huge gun, cocked it, and said, “She would have gotten me to lay them niggas down!” Chubby’s entire facial expression and demeanor changed in a matter of seconds. “Now, let’s go Jessica so you can point them niggas out and let me handle my bidness, come on!”
Chubby was a sick man and was diagnosed as a manic depressant with homicidal tendencies as per the State of New York Mental Board. He was first arrested at the age of fourteen for nearly beating six of his former classmates to death with his bare hands after they teased him about his weight. As he grew older, things fared no better as he was put in youth detention centers throughout New York and was finally emancipated from the system when he turned eighteen. He was mandated to a indefinite parole with stipulations to take his medication and see a psychiatrist on a monthly basis. Jessica was suddenly afraid of Chubby when she realized that he was serious and wanted to kill the men for a small infraction.
“Hold up. It’s no need to do that, Chubby. They are punks and if they wanted to do something they would have done it already,” Jessica said, trying her best to defuse the possibly volatile situation.
Vonda wasn’t buying any of it. “Naw, Jessica, you don’t know how these li’l niggas are today. They would put a bullet in you just for looking at them the wrong way. You need our help on this one, so maybe you should tell Chubby who they are so he can handle them niggas for you.”
“No, Vonda, I’m not going to allow you or Chubby to get mixed up in this shit if something ever goes down. I won’t be able to live with myself if y’all jeopardize your parole.”
“Fuck a parole, Jesse!” Chubby screamed. “If you got beef, then I got beef ,and that’s how the shit is gonna go down. So let’s go, and show me where them nigga be pumping at.”
“They be right in the building on 142nd Street between Lenox and 7th Ave, building 141 I think,” Vonda said quickly.
Chubby smiled knowingly and said, “Yeah, I know exactly who them niggas are.” Chubby was about to he
ad out the door but Jessica stopped him.
“Chubby! Chubby! Don’t go, just listen to me.”
Chubby turned around. “Jessica, it’s nothing you can say to stop me, so you wasting your time.”
“Just listen to me a moment, Chubby. Just listen.”
Chubby relaxed a minute, put his back up against the wall, and said, “I’m listening.”
Jessica inhaled deeply. “Give me two days, just two days, and if I don’t straighten it out by then, you can come and do what you want. Ok?”
Chubby was still boiling, but he agreed. “Just two days, Jessica, and on the third day if you ain’t straighten them niggas out, I’m coming in there blazing!”
Jessica nodded and then gave him a big hug.
He pulled away and said, “I just ask that you do two things.”
“What is it, Chubby?”
Chubby reached in his coat pocket and pulled out a small-caliber weapon and handed it to her. “Take this. It’s a 25 automatic. It’s small, but it got a bang loud enough to back a nigga up off of you. Promise me you’ll use it if you need to. It’s better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six, if you know what I mean.”
Chubby awaited an answer until Jessica nodded her approval.
“What about the second thing you want me to do, Chubby?” Jessica asked inquisitively.
Chubby blushed like he did as a kid and started rocking back and forth. “Can you cook me some lima beans like you used to do for me back in the day?”
Jessica smiled. “It would be my pleasure.”
Chapter 14
When Jessica arrived home that evening she was met by Cleveland, who was sitting on the stoop with what appeared to be crowd of people. Cleveland stood up and welcomed her back home.
“Hey, Jessica, how was your day?”
Jessica smiled nervously. “It was ok, but who are all these people?”
Cleveland turned around. “These are the other tenants. They heard about you standing up to those crack dealers and wanted to meet you.” He smiled. “Hell, the whole block heard about what happened and wanted to meet you as well.”
He saw that Jessica was uneasy about it.
“You see, Jessica, to a lot of these people all they have is their home and their neighborhood and that was taken away from them a long time ago. Like I explained to you before, since this crack epidemic came out these people had become prisoners in their own homes. When most of the tenants came out of their homes today, it was refreshing to not step over addicts or tippy-toe past the dealers and just relax on their own stoop on a nice summer afternoon like today. Look at them.”
Jessica faced them and saw the people laughing and chatting amongst themselves as if they hadn’t a care in the world. Cleveland let her absorb the gravity of it all.
“We all had a long discussion and came to the conclusion that our homes are worth fighting for and that if we all band together we might be able to take back our buildings again.”
For the first time, Jessica smiled and knew she didn’t have to take on the entire load all by herself.
“So you in?” asked Cleveland as he extended his beefy hand.
Jessica smiled and said, “Yes, I’m in.”
They shook hands and he said, “Good, good.” He walked her over to meet the rest of the tenants, who quickly introduced themselves and thanked her for being so brave.
Around 10PM that night, the most active time the dealers would come out and set up shop to sell their crack, to show a sign of force every single tenant stood on the stoop and did not allow a single person who didn’t live in the building to enter if they weren’t going to visit someone in the building. They illuminated the lights on the stoops so that their presence was known. They then set up four, four-hour shifts with at least five tenants per shift to be on duty until they were sure that they had taken back control of the building. They even repaired all locks to the building’s doors and handed out new keys to all the tenants.
Within a week of constant patrols, standing up to the dealers and turning crack addicts away, the tenants of the building had taken full control of their building again. The tenants were so thankful to Jessica for coming in and risking her life that they threw a party in her honor in the building’s community room in the basement.
The night of the party went off without a hitch and everyone was festive, when suddenly a teen ran into the party and said, “There was a shooting across the street and people are dead!”
Everyone stopped what they were doing and ran upstairs and out the front door. When they got outside, they saw the carnage of bodies of men sprawled on the ground in a puddle of blood. Seconds later, they heard the squeal of a mother’s cry as she hugged a little girl no older than five years old on the ground.
“My baby! Someone shot my baby!” the mother cried hysterically.
“Call an ambulance!” everyone began to shout. “Call the ambulance!”
Cleveland and Jessica burst through the crowd and stared down at the mother cradling her tiny daughter as blood flowed rapidly from her shoulder and arm. Jessica recognized the three boys who laid in the gutter, now lifeless, as the ones who she’d removed from her building the morning she had the bat. Words could not describe how everyone felt at that moment as the mother’s cries filled the air of the night. Three young men died and a child was in critical condition that night as the police and ambulance came and went that fateful evening.
Remnants of yellow tape and blood surrounded the area. By morning the people whispered about the incident and were sure that the shooting was drug-related. No one was even arrested for the shooting because everyone claimed not to have seen anything, so the killer got away without as much as a glance. Rumor had it, that the three young men who died that night tried to take over the building across the street and the dealers who were already occupying the building warned them earlier that day to sell their product elsewhere and they didn’t heed the advice.
In light of the shooting, Jessica and Cleveland organized and set up an emergency meeting with the local precinct by posting leaflets in the every building in the block. Over one hundred people showed up that night as the captain and eight of his officers from central division command addressed the residents of the surrounding area. The locals were in an uproar as the middle-aged white officer yelled over the crowd to try to regain a call of order.
“Ladies and gentleman, please, can you calm down and let one person speak at a time? We will not get anywhere if we can’t hear you address your issues at hand.”
A big dark-skinned woman shouted, “How can you tell us to calm down when our children are being shot dead in the street like dogs and no one was arrested?”
The statement added fuel to the people, and the crowd yelled even louder.
“Yeah,” said one elderly man, “instead of all you policemen standing up there telling us to calm down, you should be out there searching for the killer!”
The officer tried to speak, but the large crowd drowned them out.
“Please, please, people,” said the captain. “Let us talk, and we can answer your questions.”
The crowd slowly settled down and the captain said, “I’d like to introduce you to the lead detective on this case, Detective Harris.”
Detective Harris stepped from behind all the other officers and to the podium. He was young, tall, well-built black man with a short afro and long porkchop sideburns. The crowd was totally surprised to see a Negro in such high ranking position, and it immediately got quiet as soon as he stepped in front of the podium.
He surveyed the crowd before speaking then cleared his throat. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Detective Dale Harris, and I have been assigned to the shooting that happened in this case. I’m not at liberty to divulge to you the particulars of the case because it is still ongoing, but what I can tell you is that we are doing the best we can with leads that we do have. Unfortunately, we do not have as many eyewitness accounts as we need, and we are h
opeful that someone will still come forward to help us to bring the perpetrators to justice.”
“So, what are you saying?” yelled one of the men in the crowd. “You saying that you have nothing?”
“What I’m saying,” the detective continued, “is that we need more of your help to bring this case to a close.”
There were many grumbles from the crowd.
“What, you want us to solve the case for you? Is that what you saying? Risk our lives so them drug dealers could come after us?” said a woman from the crowd.
“Yeah, that’s your job,” hollered another.
The officers looked from one face to another and saw that this was going nowhere until a woman asked, “What are you doing about the origin of the problem? The drug dealers that took over our buildings and block. What about them?”
“Yeah,” said a man, “they dealing right in the open. Why aren’t you doing anything about that?”
The captain stepped forth with a folder. He put on his glasses and read, “Within the last fiscal year, we made over thirty arrests, all drug-related charges, and closed down over a dozen drug houses on your block alone.”
“As soon as you close one down, two others open up to replace them. What are we supposed to do about that? Point them out to you?”
“I ain’t gon’ risk my life to rat out none of them drug dealers. I got a family to take care of,” cried another.
“Yeah!” screamed the crowd, turning it into a louder pandemonium.
Detective Harris raised both his hand up to speak. “What you can do . . .” He paused to ensure everyone heard him and repeated, “What you can do to help us is organize a tenant patrol and a tenant watch and band together as a block association and stop them before they set up these houses.”
There was still a lot of grumbling from the crowd because they weren’t buying any of it.
“Oh, that won’t work,” everyone began saying.
Harlem Girl Lost 2 Page 13