Thugs Cry

by Ca$H

  I sit up on the edge of my bed and take a sip from the bottle of Cuervo Gold that’s resting on the portable bar nearby. “Ahhh!” I exclaim with satisfaction as the smooth liquor coats the back of my throat.

  I watch Catabria move around the spacious bedroom; her freshly showered body wrapped in nothing but a towel. Her chocolate thighs are like magnets to my eyes.

  “Let a nigga peep up under that towel.”

  “Boo, you already know it’s that wet wet up underneath this towel,” she cooes with her back to me, preening in the full length wall mirror. “Now, if you wanna hit it, I’m game.” She drops the towel and wiggles her booty.

  Then she slowly turns to face me, cupping both perky breasts. Her dark chocolate nipples are tout and the size of an infant’s pinky finger. Her waist is slim and her stomach is a washboard; her hips flare out wide; her pussy is deliciously bald.

  I get up and walk over to Catabria, who takes my hand and places it on her bald pussy. “Is this what you want, baby?”

  My joint stands up and pokes her in the belly.

  “Ooooh, don’t make me suck it, daddy,” she whines, then slowly traces my mouth with her tongue.

  I play along.

  “Get down on your knees and put it in your mouth.”

  “Nooo! Daddy, please don’t make me do that. It’s too big, it’ll stretch my mouth.”

  “Suck it!”

  Catabria sinks down to her knees and slides my boxers down around my ankles. I feel her lips encircle the head of my dick.

  “I don’t wanna suck it, Daddy,” she mumbles, then proceeds to give me slow neck that a nigga can’t even describe.

  Shorty has me bustin’ all down her throat in just minutes. This bitch oughta be banded from TV! I think, as my legs go weak.

  I stumble back onto the bed.

  “Crawl to me!” I command.

  Catabria obeys. When she reaches the bed, from her knees, she reaches up and strokes my still-hard dick.

  “Are you gonna make me put this big ol’ thing inside my tight little pussy? Please, CJ, don’t! It’s going to hurt my little coochie!” she whines as she straddles me.

  Life is never all sex, fun, and games.

  Eventually, a nigga gotta put his dick inside his pants and get back to handlin’ business. I’ve been chillin’ for a minute ’cause Cujo hasn’t hit me off with any work since a new mayor took office and after a special election last month appointed a new police chief.

  I’m not privy to who was actually pulling the strings down at City Hall and inside the narcotics unit to make it possible for Cujo to break me off the way he had been doing, but I do know that the change of mayors and the appointing of the new police chief has put a huge dent in my operation. I haven’t received any drugs from Cujo in more than two months.

  While I wait on Cujo to holla, other niggaz are out here tryna break the chokehold I have on the game in Newark. Plus, I got proof that it was Kareem not Flip, who had been setting up Flips clientele for KD and Ghetto to jack awhile back. Be careful of the dog that brought you the bone, I recall Flip warning me when I confronted him. True enough, it was Kareem who tried to convince me that Flip was the sour one, when all the time he was the snake in the grass!

  Kareem has since branched out on his own. KD is in the ground, remember? But Ghetto escaped the bullets I’d shot at him that night. Afterwards, he got ghost. Now the nigga has resurfaced as Kareem’s right hand man. Those two niggaz got shit poppin’ off nice over around Branch Brook Park. Niggaz must think I wear a skirt!

  There are other niggaz in the city trying to make power moves while I’m shut down. That’s to be expected, though. As long as they fall back when I get back straight, I’ll spare their mamas and girlfriends from having to bury ’em. But ain’t a prayer ever been uttered that’s gonna spare Ghetto and Kareem from the wrath of my choppa, especially Kareem, because that bitch ass nigga straight violated.

  Cujo calls me up and tells me that we’re back in the ball game. I meet with him and pick up a shipment of work, disperse it to my team, then call my nigga Rah back; he had called earlier but I was tied up. Rah tells me that Stephanie has gotten married and has moved the twins away.

  “Like I gives a fuck,” I say.

  “Fam, them are your seeds.”

  “Not now, son.” I stop his banter before he builds up steam. “I got too much shit going on to even sweat that.”

  We chop it up about other things for a minute, then I say, “Fam, I’ma fuck witchu later.”

  “Aight, one.”

  “One.”

  I hang up from Rah and answer a call from Eric, who wants to know if I’ma be ready to ride on Ghetto and Kareem tonight.

  “I got them bitch niggaz scoped out,” says Eric.

  “That’s what’s poppin’. Hit me after it gets dark.”

  No sooner than I disconnect from Eric, I get a call from Mom Duke; she presses me for money. Now, Catabria is on hold, the other line, tryna persuade me to come home and dip in her honey pot.

  All this drama, plus I’m missing Tamika like crazy. That’s just being real, yo. Tamika has been wifey since I was a peon in the game; back when all I had was a dollar and a dream. So, damn right, I miss my shorty, even though I got Catabria playing her position and mad other hos on my dick. Still, I gotta wonder about these come-lately bitches. It’s easy for a ho to love a nigga when he’s on top. But where was all of these dimed up hos when a nigga was no more than a block hustla?

  Tamika proved her love way before I became that nigga.

  I put Jay Z’s The Blue Print CD in deck as I climb into the black Maybach I recently copped. The CD is one of his old joints, but it’s classic.

  Leaving Mom Duke’s crib, where I’ve just dropped her off a coupla stacks, I listen nostalgically as Jay Z spits some real shit.

  I can understand why you want a divorce now/though I can’t let you know it/pride won’t let me show it/pretend to be heroic/that’s just one to grow with/but deep inside a nigga so sick…

  I’m thinking about Tamika. I done took shorty through mad drama with other bitches, outside seeds, lies and all. I’m understanding now, that money and hood fame has attracted flocks of females, and I’ve allowed it all to tear down the bond between me and my boo. That’s why she has bounced, and now she’s fuckin’ with another nigga.

  …a face of stone/was shocked on the other end of the phone/word back home is that you have a special friend/so, what was oh so special then?/You have given away without getting at me/that’s your fault, how many times have you forgiven me?/How was I to know that you was plain sick of me?/I know, the way a nigga was livin’ was wack/but you don’t get a nigga back like that!

  Jiggaz lyrics land like a punch to the heart.

  I rewind the CD and listen to “Song Cry” over and over again, until I’m pulling up in Tamika’s driveway. I wipe my eyes before getting out of my whip and going up to Tamika’s door.

  Tamika’s mother let’s me in.

  “Tamika! Somebody’s here to see you!” she calls upstairs.

  Somebody? I see how it is!

  “Who is it, Ma? If it’s Nard, send him up.”

  I try not to blow.

  “Come downstairs and see for yourself,” her Mom Dukes replies, as if my name tastes too bitter to speak.

  “Miss Jerkins, you mad at me or something? ’Cause you sho’ acting all salty. I thought I was your son-in-law?” I say, reaching out to hug her, but she quickly steps back.

  “I don’t approve of the way you’ve been treating my daughter!”

  “Aww, Mother-in-law, what man you know of who hasn’t ever messed up? Dat don’t mean I don’t love her.”

  Tamika bounds down the stairs, looking mouth watering in a pair of tight capris and a form-fitting wife beater.

  “What doesn’t mean you don’t love me?” asks Tamika, overhearing CJ’s comment.

  “Trust and believe, you don’t wanna know,” replies her Mom Duke with a snake of her neck.
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  Me and Tamika take a seat on the living room sofa; Tamika’s mom saunters off to the kitchen.

  It’s been three weeks since the last time I saw Tamika. That was when I had heard about her and some young nigga named Nard. I snatched that ass up and took her to a tattoo parlor, and made her get a tattoo covering each place where my name had been tatted on her body.

  “Fuck you gon’ rock my name on your mafuckin’ body, while kickin’ it with the next nigga!” I’d spat.

  “Sup, baby girl? Long time, no see,” I say now.

  “Hi, CJ.”

  I take her hands in mine. “You ready to come back home to me?” Looking into her brown eyes.

  “Don’t ask me that.” She lowers her head to hide the fact that her eyes are watering up.

  “Why not?”

  “Because yo’ ass ain’t gonna do right; you want me and every other chick you can stick yo’ dirty ass dick in.”

  “Nah, boo, I’m through fuckin’ around.”

  “How many times have I heard that?”

  “Too many,” I admit. “But this time I’ma keep my word,” I promise.

  “No, CJ, I cannot trust you. I’m so tired of all of your lies and other women.”

  “Fa real, Mika; a nigga ain’t the same without you. Boo, those other chicks can’t compare to you,” I state with pure honesty. Then I lean in to kiss her, but Tamika turns her head.

  “Apparently, you thought they could!”

  I get down on my knees holding her hands in mine, looking into her eyes with a sincerity that can’t be faked.

  “Please, baby girl, just give a nigga one last chance. I promise to never, ever fuck up again. Boo, you’re the only girl I’ve ever loved or wanted. When I hear about you being out with that nigga…it be damn near about to kill me. Why you gotta chump my name in the streets like that?”

  Tamika snatches her hands out of my clasp.

  “That’s all you’re worried about, your rep. Yo’ ass wasn’t worried about my reputation when you was running up in my own cousin! Worse, when you stuck yo’ dick up in that nasty bitch who gave you herpes, then you brought that triflin’ ass shit home to me. Besides, muthafucka, you have a lot of nerve coming over here, asking me to come back to you, and you already got the next bitch sleeping in our bed.”

  “What you talkin’ ’bout,” I stutter.

  “See!” Tamika grills me. “You can’t tell the truth when you’re caught in your shit, nigga. I drove out to your house, two or three times, and saw you and a bitch carrying groceries inside once; holding hands on the porch another time, and kissing in the driveway a third time. Same bitch each time! Just today, I called your home number and the bitch answered the phone. So, nigga, stop playing games and be a man about it.”

  “A’ight. Tell me you’ll come back to me, and I’ll go home and put her ass out.”

  “No, CJ, you’re too much of a ho. You only want me back because you can’t stand knowing that someone else wants me.”

  “It’s not like that, boo. I may have creeped, but I love you, and I never mistreated you.”

  “Creepin’ is mistreating me!” Tamika’s mom yells from the kitchen.

  “Damn! Is these walls made of paper?” I huff.

  “Mama, quit eavesdropping!” yells Tamika.

  “Don’t fall for any bullshit, baby!”

  “It ain’t bullshit, boo,” I say to Tamika, trying to counter her mother’s salt. I kiss Tamika’s fingers and whisper, pleadingly, “I miss you, baby. Come back home to me; you got a nigga sick.”

  “When you realize that love brings your ass home at night, and not with an STD, that’s when I’ll think about coming back to you.”

  Tamika gets up, walks to the front door, opens it. “Goodbeye, CJ, I’m expecting company shortly,” she says, crushing a niggaz heart.

  Like a niggaz heart, winter is gone.

  Spring is in full bloom; The Bricks are alive, with muhfuckaz out in hordes on every block. The evening sun is closing its eyes, allowing the night to spread its darkness over the city. Me, Eric, Flip, and Snoop are strappin’ up, ready to welcome in the warm weather with some fresh warm blood on the streets of Newark.

  This shit is long overdue, but tonight Kareem and Ghetto are about to get it.

  I park down the street from where Kareem and Ghetto are posted up, on the hood of Kareem’s Turbo Porsche, holdin’ the block’s attention with the fly new whip; both of them rockin’ enough shine to light up the night. A crowd of about two dozen stand around them soaking up jewels about how to become hood supastars.

  Them niggaz on stage, stunnin’. Right down here in Little Bricks, where I made my name, and helped Kareem to make his! I think to myself as my top lip curls down in anger. Niggaz must think I’ve gone soft.

  Me and my niggaz fan out, hoodies pulled low and tight as we creep like cat burglars. Nobody notices us until we are in murdering range of our targets. My choppa lets loose first, cutting niggaz up like paper confetti. Eric’s Mac II spits its ominous rhythm seconds later, followed by the thunderous clap of Snoop’s pistol-grip pump. Flips twin nines join the blood bath late; he’s the “clean up man.”

  The unexpected ambush clears the block of all on-lookers and bystanders fortunate enough not to get caught up in the deadly assault. Only eight mafuckaz, besides me and my goons, are left out on the block after the initial gunfire.

  Three unlucky bystanders are sprawled out on the ground, victims of bad timing. Two others are hit but not down; they stagger like drunks, until Snoop blows a hole the size of a dinner plate in one of them, and Eric wets the other.

  That’s five.

  The sixth one is a chick named Shanika; a seventeen year old who I can tell recognizes my face. No witnesses! I chop shorty down like a paper target.

  That leaves Kareem and Ghetto. Well, only Kareem actually, because Ghetto is sprawled crookedly across the hood of his boy’s Porsche; half of his head is missing.

  Kareem is shot up, on the ground crawling. I kick him over onto his side. Blood covers the jacket he’s rockin. I look down into his pleading face and smile menacingly.

  “I own The Bricks, nigga!” I spit, then turn out his muhfuckin’ lights.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  TAMIKA

  I have the top down on the peach-colored Saleen Mustang that Nard copped for me just a week ago. My hair is tinted gold and worn in crinkles that cascade down to my bare shoulders. The dark Jackie Onassis shades I’m rocking blocks out the glint of the sun.

  I pull up behind Nard’s truck, where he’s standing talking to his brother Man Dog and his man Big Nasty. Nard and Man Dog, who are both about five-foot-ten and medium build, look like midgets next to Big Nasty, who is six foot nine, about three zillion pounds of muscle.

  Big Nasty is as black as freshly poured tar, with a huge bald head, and a quiet demeanor that makes a bitch’s skin crawl. His pit bull, Lil Nasty, is on a chain leash at his side. So of course, I don’t dare get out of the car.

  “Y’all hol’ up,” I hear Nard say, then he strides up to my car, leans inside, and kisses me.

  “Sup, baby?”

  “You told me to come by and pick up the money to pay for your birthday party, remember?

  “Oh yeah. Damn, I’m slippin’, yo. Big Nasty, bring me five stacks…nah, make that ten or fifteen.”

  Big Nasty chains Lil Nasty to a light pole and dips inside the house. He returns with a shoe bag.

  “Fifteen,” he announces, handing the bag to Nard, then going back over to where Man Dog is posted.

  Nard passes the bag inside the car to me.

  “Use whatever you need, boo,” he suggests.

  I remove my shades and wrinkle my brow.

  “What if someone is watching? You’re getting careless, Nard,” I admonish.

  “Check.”

  “Stay on point, baby.”

  “I will,” he promises as his eyes follow three half-naked little hos that walk by and stop to talk with Man Dog and Big Nasty.<
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  “Is one of them here to see you?” I question Nard after doing the math.

  “Naw. You know I don’t get down like that. I don’t have but two: you and the one you’re carrying.” He leans over inside the car and affectionately rubs my belly.

  Yes, I’m pregnant with Nard’s child.

  “Don’t let me find out, Nard,” I threaten.

  “Yo, Big Nasty! Bring those three hos over here,” Nard commands.

  Big Nasty leads the girls over to us, followed by Man Dog and two other trap boys of Nards, who have just emerged from inside the house.

  Nard addresses the three chicks, who are popping gum simultaneously. “Y’all tell my lady who each one of you are, and who you came over here to holla at. Don’t lie, either, or I’ma make Big Nasty choke y’all out.”

  A little, freckled face redbone says, “I’m Contoure, Man Dog’s girl.” Rolling her eyes.

  A thick red chick with big titties and hardly no ass, says, “My name is Tropicana, and I s’pose to be kickin’ it with Quentin’s crazy ass,” pointing at one of the two trap boys.

  The third chick sucks her teeth in protest. She’s eye candy, so I guess she feels that she doesn’t have to explain shit to me.

  “And who might you be, bitch?” I ask.

  She fixes her mouth to say something breezy, but thinks better of it when Nard reaches for the burner on his waist.

  “I’m nobody,” she pouts. “Zakee, don’t call me no more!” she says to the second trap dude, then she storms down the street.

  Nard chuckles. “See, Tamika, it’s all about you.”

  Talk about whupped!

  I got Nard so sprung. It scares me at times. Truth be told, though, I’m still in love with CJ. But I might as well accept that it’s really over between us. Because even if CJ does get the ho out of him, he’ll never accept me back with another man’s child.

  How did that happen? All I can tell you is that Nard must’ve skeeted right through the contraceptives. Last week, my mouth hit the floor when my OB/GYN told me that I was five weeks pregnant. I’ve thought about aborting but decided not to. This baby means everything to Nard, and it doesn’t look like CJ is in a rush to have me back; he hasn’t called or come around in a month.