Thugs Cry

by Ca$H

  “Ladies and gentlemen, hustlaz and hos, playaz and fly chicks, the young don has just fell up in this muhfucka!”

  The spotlight finds CJ, me on his arm. Bitches better know. CJ’s whole teams, over a hundred niggaz, roll up behind us.

  “Y’all clear out VIP and make room for The Bricks most official team, yo! Show respect for the realest,” screams the DJ into the mic.

  We invade VIP like we own the whole club.

  Soon, the bubbly is flowing, weed smoke is in the air, CJ is sporting me like old times.

  “These hos can’t compare to you, ma,” CJ whispers in my ear. We’re hugged up in a booth.

  “Well, you need to start treating me like you realize it,” I tell him, putting my tongue in his ear.

  CJ turns his head so that he can suck my tongue.

  “Mmm,” I moan.

  “I know I fucked up big, but I love you more than anything in my life, Mika. More than the gaup, the whips, and the street fame. More than anything you can name,” he says, nibbling on my bottom lip.

  If CJ’s words were food they could be candied a yam, that’s how sweet he whispers them into my mouth. I want to gobble them up and ask for seconds. But y’all know I have to speak my peace.

  I pull my mouth away from his and asks, brows arched but knitted, “If you have that much love for me, nigga, why didn’t you kick Brittany Spears ass for coming to our house and putting you on blast, breaking up our happy home? Better yet, why you creep in the first place?”

  CJ tries to kiss me again. I lock tongues with him for a half a minute then, “Answer my question, nigga.”

  He sighs, “What can I say, ma? Man, I just slipped. Stephanie gettin’ pregnant was an accident, and—”

  “An accident? What? Was you walking down the street not looking where you were going, tripped over something, and fell between her legs?” I asks sarcastically. “That’s an accident! If you ran up in her willingly, with no condom on, those kids ain’t no accident.”

  “I was drunk, yo.”

  The nigga lies like I’m Suzy Fu Fu.

  I jump all in his shit. The pain of his betrayal comes out in a torrent of tears and accusations. “I never would’ve thought that you were on some jungle fever shit,” I conclude.

  “Girl, you know it ain’t like that. But dig, I didn’t bring you out tonight to argue about that shit. I wanted you to roll with us to show muhfuckaz that we still holding each other down. Bitches been all in my grill lately, talkin’ ’bout they heard you had bounced. So I know mad niggaz been tryna get at you.”

  I fix my mouth to deny it but CJ cuts me off.

  “It don’t matter, man. I know you ain’t gon’ play yaself. Can’t no other nigga compare to this,” he boasts, tapping his chest with a fist. “Our thing is platinum, baby. Whose name tatted on your breast, ass, and neck?”

  “Yours,” I reply. Daymum, I love this nigga.

  “I can’t have these knuckleheads thinking I can’t hold on to wifey, ’cause then they’ll start thinkin’ that a nigga can’t hold his crown. Nah mean? Come back home, shorty,” pleads CJ, looking into my hazel browns.

  “Oh, that’s the only reason why you want me to move back in with you? To prove something to niggaz?”

  “Hell naw! Shit just ain’t the same without coming home to you. I bought that big ass joint for you, ma. It ain’t a home without you in it.”

  CJ looks so sad that he has me feeling guilty. I feel myself about to cry. I have forgiven CJ for too much shit already. I still love the ground that he walks on but if I continue letting him get away with creepin’, one of these days I’ma lose him for real. Because when a nigga starts taking his girl for granted her position is in serious jeopardy.

  Alicia Keys “Why Do I Feel So Sad” plays in the background as if the DJ is locked into my emotions. I wanna move back in with CJ, but I have to hold my ground. At least until he realizes that he has to clean up his act or risk losing what he claims to love above all else.

  I turn my head so that CJ can’t see the tear cascading down my face.

  I see Kareem with some first-night-pussy on his lap. Kareem likes his women real easy, like Rah’s sister, LaKeesha, who he has a daughter by. Then again, the whole hood is gonna have a baby by her at the rate she’s going. She already has two babies by two different niggaz, now she’s pregnant with the third, by your guess is as good as mine.

  Not my problem, though. I don’t fuck with Miss Hot Ass. Don’t really got much to say to Rah, either, now that he’s home. See, I blame him for hooking my man up with that white bitch.

  CJ’s crew is wildin’ in the club, spraying bubbly on hos, making it rain, the whole nine. I watch bitches watching me, wishing that they could switch places with me, not knowing that its hell being CJ’s wifey.

  CJ comes back to my place with me after we all leave the club. He used every persuasion in the mack encyclopedia to get me to go back to the baby mansion with him, but ever since his white bitch set foot inside those doors, the place was no longer home to me.

  Mama is asleep when we get back to my house. CJ picks me up in his arms at the door, carries me to my bedroom, and proves that the sexual chemistry between us is as hot as ever. He careeses me with his tongue until I cuss God for creating a muthafucka who can make me feel so damn good. When he enters me. I cry out his name.

  TWENTY-TWO

  RAHEEM

  I’m at the crib; a simple two bedroom joint that me and Kayundra copped out in Powder Springs when I came home from the Feds last year. Shorty is getting ready to hit the studio and do a piece with Scare Me, a new rapper who fucks with Young Jeezy.

  While my boo is at the studio, I’ma swing by the nightclubs that I own. One, the Starnight, is an upscale joint in Buckhead that caters to the professional crowd. The other, Club Sparkle, is on Flat Shoals Road in Decatur; it’s not as upscale as the Starnight but it’s a magnet for ballers and the array of chicks they attract.

  Since I’m not on paper, there is no PO to tell me that I can’t do this or that, or associate with felons. Still I’m striving to get to the guap without having to slang. Straight up, that lil bid gave a nigga time to think, reflect, and weigh my options. Journalism is out, but I’m still determined to be a success.

  Big Ma is disappointed that I have given up my scholastic dreams. But I told her like this: “Big Ma, I know that life hasn’t been easy for you, lady. You lost your only child to drugs and violence, then you had to raise two knuckleheads in an environment that undermined everything that you tried to instill in us. But you did the best you could,” I’d said, placing her gentle hands in mine.

  “You gave us mad love and guidance. Me and LaKeesha just wanted to do what we wanted to do. The world can’t blame you.” I wiped a tear that trickled down her sweet face, then continued, “I know I’ve disappointed you so far, but, at the end of the day, your teachings will shine through. Just keep me in your prayers, beautiful woman. I love you,” I’d concluded, hugging her.

  Big Ma just wants the best for me and LaKeesha.

  I drop a jewel on CJ from time to time because I wanna see my nigga walk away from the game, not get carried away. I don’t beat his ears up with advice though; ’cause if push came to shove I’d get back on the grind myself. So fuck being a hypocrite. No matter what, that’s my nigga ’til the end. Fam held me down the whole time I was on lock, like the solid nigga he’s always been.

  He moved Kayundra to Jessup, Georgia, where I was serving my bid, so that she could visit me every week. Even after she found a job CJ continued to make sure that she wasn’t without. Kept my commissary laced, too.

  Real niggaz do real things.

  When I touched down, he asked, “What all you need, fam? I already got you one of them Chrysler 300 joints on deck. That bitch got a chameleon paint job so it flips colors and looks like you pushin’ a different whip every time you bend a corner.”

  Then he hit me with twenty stacks, saying, “Go cop a wardrobe, fam. You done got mad dies
el!”

  Now that’s mad love, yo.

  I’d bumped into N.O. soon after opening the Starnight. He was still ballin’, but since I wasn’t trying to fuck with no work we really didn’t have nothing else to chop it up about.

  “Be easy, whoady,” he’d said.

  “You too.” I’d dapped him.

  As he was about to walk away, he turned and asked, “Did you hear what happened to Don and ’em?”

  “Yeah,” I’d replied.

  A few months before I was released I had read in the Atlanta Journal/Constitution that Don and his crew had caught crazy fed time for mad bodies, drug trafficking, possession of illegal weapons, and whatever else those dirty ass feds could pile on.

  Just keepin’ it gangsta, I was more than a bit concerned that I might get tied in with the clique. But they all bit the bullet and took their medicine like men, which is an anomolly, ’cause these days niggaz will implicate their own mamas in some shit to walk.

  “Baby, I’m about to go to the studio,” says Kayundra as she comes into the den where I’m at the computer working on a manuscript. She bends down and places a cherry red kiss on my cheek.

  Shorty the truth, yo.

  She trooped for me every step of the way, my entire bid. Put her singing dream on hold until I touched down. Not once did she backslide on drugs, miss a visit, or wrap her legs around another nigga. That’s the type of loyalty and dedication that is to be treasured.

  “Okay, I’ll see you later tonight,” I say, still typing. “Come by the club when you’re done at the studio.”

  “Which one?” asked Kayundra, putting her hand up under my wife beater and rubbing my chest.

  “The one that’s named after you.”

  LaKeesha calls a minute or two after Kayundra leaves for the studio.

  “What’s good?” I ask.

  “Nothin’. I need a loan,” she replies, cutting straight to the chase.

  “How much?”

  “Five hundred.”

  “Aight, I got you. I’ma send it through Money Gram. How’s my nephew and niece doing?”

  “They’re good. You and Kayundra want them to come stay with y’all for a while? I swear, I need a break before this other baby comes.”

  No, you need to stop having all these babies and do something with your life.

  I don’t verbalize my thoughts because I’ve been on LaKeesha’s case real hard since coming home. Lately, I’ve decided to switch up, maybe positive words will encourage her to get her shit together.

  “Let me holla at Kayundra about that,” I say in regards to us keeping my nephew and niece for awhile.

  Damn, I can’t think of anything positive to tell her. So I ask her for Kareem’s cell phone number.

  “What do you wanna call him about?”

  “Sis, will you please just give me his number?”

  “Rah, what’s good?” Kareem greets me after I identify myself. But I’m not about to act all buddy buddy with him, not the way he’s dragging my peeps.

  “Son, you gettin’ crazy gaup, right?” I set him up.

  “Fa sho,” he responds.

  “Fuck my sister gotta call down here asking me for money then?”

  “Yo, Rah, whatchu speakin’ on?”

  “Nigga, you doing my peeps dirty and that shit don’t sit right wit’ me.”

  “Hol’ up, nigga!” he snaps back. “Me and La ain’t like that no more. She’s carrying the next niggaz seed; if she need some money, that’s on him.”

  “When was the last time you hit her up with some money for your daughter?” All I hear is silence. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Nigga, be a man about the shit and take care of yours, then my sister wouldn’t be struggling.”

  Kareem begins to retor, something breezy probably, but must’ve thought better of it. I know that he doesn’t fear me, he’s a killa. So it’s respect that makes him say, “I feel you, Rah. I’ma call La and work something out with her. Word.”

  “Aight, son. One.”

  Respect given, respect shown.

  When CJ comes in town the next day, I have to get in my niggaz ear about the same shit. He’s mad at Steph for blowing up his spot so he isn’t going to visit his children.

  “Yo, fam. I’m not tryna hear no lecture,” he jokes as he fires up a blunt and sits at my computer and begins reading the urban street lit novel that I’m working on.

  “Oh, you gon’ be an author now?” he quips.

  “Yeah, Insha Allah. You know I’ve always been nice wit’ the pen. Now that I’m a convicted felon a journalism career ain’t really a viable option anymore. At least not if I try to go the traditional route, so I’ma try my hand at writin’ street novels, them joints is hot.”

  “Yo, it’s a chick got a publishing company in East Orange that fuck with them type of books. I be seeing advertisements about her company all around Newark. I think shorty did a bid in the feds, somethin’ like ten joints. Kept it gangsta too.”

  “Yep. You talking ’bout Wahida Clark. I wrote her when I was on lock, she seems like good people. I sent her the first five chapters of my joint a few months ago and she hit me back saying that her and her editors is feelin’ it, and for me to send the rest.”

  “Word? So when yo’ shit comin’ out?” CJ jumps the gun, picking up several books published by Wahida Clark Publishing that I have sitting on the desk.

  “Shid. I can’t even find the time to finish writin’ it, and you asking when it’s coming out.” I chuckle.

  CJ fires up a blunt and flips through the pages of Trust No Man by Cash, nodding his head.

  “I’ma have to read this joint, yo,” he says, setting the novel down and grabbing the sequel, Trust No Man 2 (Disloyalty Is Unforgivable).

  “That shit is butta, fam, I’m tellin’ you. Dude put it down.” I say, though tryna get CJ to read a book is gonna be like tryna get all the brothaz and sistahs on lock freed.

  “This shit sound like that fire,” he says, reading the blurb on the back cover from Kwame Teague, the author of those Dutch joints, who’s from the Bricks. “Don’t they got these joints on audio?” asks CJ, now sweatin’ Thirsty by Mike Sanders.

  “I think so.”

  I switch the subject back to Steph and the twins.

  “You still on that, yo?” CJ replies. “Fuck being an author, yo’ ass need to be a imam, ’cause you always got advice for a nigga.” Clownin’.

  “Like steel sharpens steel, men sharpen men,” I jewel him.

  “I feel you, yo.”

  He still doesn’t go visit Steph and the twins.

  TWENTY-THREE

  CJ

  Winter comes in with a bang. Snow covers the streets of Newark like piles of cocaine, and the wind and cold dares a muhfucka to come outside. I’m up to the challenge, though, as I hop outta my whip, hoodie pulled tight, head ducked like a fullback running up the middle of the goal line.

  “Close that damn door!” Mama yells as Eric lets me in. My lil bruh don’t live with our Mom Dukes, he has his own spot. Mama called us over to talk to us.

  I copped Mom Dukes this joint on Munn Avenue just outside the hood a coupla years ago. Offered to move her to the ’burbs but she wouldn’t hear of it. She’s been on and off the pipe for the past few years, but I think she’s back fuckin’ around now because she’s been seen in the projects a lot lately, and I know what that’s about.

  I close the door and touch fists with Eric; Go hug Mom Dukes, who’s sitting on the sofa smoking a Newport, looking vexed.

  “It didn’t take y’all but three days to come by and see what it is I wanted,” Mama says sarcastically. “I bet if Tamika calls you, you would fly over there to see what she wants.”

  “All you do is fuss,” I say and pull her ponytail.

  She smacks my hand.

  “You ain’t no better, Eric,” she directs her aim at him. Like me, Eric ignores her.

  “Ma, you need to clean up around here. Fa real, it don’t make no sense, yo.”

/>   “Hire me a maid!”

  “I’m just sayin’…”

  “You ain’t sayin’ shit! Start cleaning up if you got a problem with the way it look in here,” she checks Eric, cigarette smoke coming out of her mouth in little clouds that break up and disappear.

  “Brianna!” I call out and my lil sister who’s now fourteen, with the body of an eighteen-year-old, comes downstairs with her cell phone glued to her ear.

  “That’s all she do, talk on the phone all day,” says Mama. Bri rolls her eyes.

  Mama peeps it. “You and Eric spoil Miss Thang too fuckin’ much, that’s why she think she’s grown.”

  “I do not,” disputes Bri.

  Mama right about one thing, me and Eric do spoil Bri. But she deserves it because she’s an A student and she minds Mama most of the time. I don’t try to shelter Bri, I give it to her gully, lettin’ her know how lil niggaz gon’ try to come at her to hit it. And Eric got lil dudes scared to even speak to Bri.

  “Bri, clean up the house, yo,” I tell her.

  “Okay.” She gets right to it.

  “So, Ma, what you need to talk to us about?” asks Eric, plopping down on the sofa next to her. I sit in the armchair adjacent to them.

  Mama mashes out her cigarette.

  “I need an increase in my allowance,” she says, sounding like a teenager.

  Me and Eric look at one another and silently communicate that it ain’t going down. We both pay all of Mama’s bills and are blessing her lovely enough already.

  Mama fuckin’ wit that crack again. That’s why she’s asking for more gaup, I think.

  When we refuse to increase what we give her each month, our Mom Dukes goes off into left field ranting about Eric following in my criminal footsteps.

  “Y’all asses gonna end up dead or under the got damn jail! I’m not lettin’ y’all corrupt my baby. Brianna! Don’t let me catch yo’ ass acceptin’ anything else from either one of yo’ drug dealin’ brothers! You hear me, got dammit?” Mama screams over the noise of the vacuum cleaner which Bri is running across the carpet.