There is no turning back for me.
A caravan of more black SUVs pull into the lot. Escalades, Expeditions, Range and Land Rovers, a couple Hummers. All the vehicles are black, all with the darkest tint possible on their windows. Various songs, played at ear-drum-shattering levels, compete with one another from the SUVs’ stereo speakers. Young people file out of the cars, their excitement palpable. Fiasco has drivers for each vehicle. They exit, as well. Dudes he grew up with, he told me on the ride over. Tough cats, every single one of them. And they’re large. All business. Like the men who guard Minister Louis Farrakhan. Fruit of Islam, I believe they are called. Each one has the Dirty Jersey medallion, the tattoo. I’m the only member of Fiasco’s clique that didn’t grow up with him in Camden.
All the young people who file from the SUVs are dressed in some form of hip-hop gear.
All of them are cool. With that swagger Fiasco always talks about.
And I’m among them, but better than them. I have the medallion.
Staccato popping sounds burst out and interrupt my reverie. Sounds like the gunfire you’re apt to hear at Crash’s building in the projects.
I should leave.
I look over toward the SUVs. Fiasco emerges from Mya’s black Range Rover after the young people have gone inside. He looks the Range Rover over appreciatively for a brief moment and then makes his way in my direction. The Range Rover’s engine comes to life. Then the truck pulls away, Mya at the wheel. Fiasco stops beside me. It’s just me and him. A party of two. Again, I’m special.
I say, “Where’s Mya going?”
“She doesn’t like it here. It’s best she keeps it moving. I don’t press the issue.”
I ask, “That gunfire I hear? Sounds like gunfire.”
Fiasco says, “Got this place dirt cheap. Me and my homies…shorties, too…and I’m talking video-ho fine…come out here and convalesce. R and R, ya heard?”
He didn’t answer my question about the gunfire. I don’t repeat it.
I say, “You bought this place just to have a place to chill?”
He nods. “And do business. I ain’t shortsighted. I hustle hard out of here.”
My mind flashes to the movie Belly, a vehicle to showcase the acting skills of rappers Nas, DMX and others. My mind also flashes on New Jack City. Gangsta flicks. Women, in bras and panties, at some out-of-the-place spot similar to this one Fiasco has brought me to, packaging drugs for sale. Hustling hard.
Fiasco must notice something shift in me, because he puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “Nothing illegal, son. I’m like Fif now. Still on my grind, still on the hustle, get rich or die trying and all that, but always through legal enterprise. Jail ain’t a good look. I understand that.” He stops, smiles. “Even though I gotta admit a minute on lockdown wouldn’t hurt my album sales. Jail is a marketing campaign for rappers. Who needs an ad in Vibe; just one day in the clink beats that.” He laughs at that last part. I do, too. Even though my mother has always taught me that jail is not a laughing matter.
More of what sounds like gunfire pierces the air. I ignore it.
I ask Fiasco, “So what kind of hustle do you do out of here, then?”
His eyes light up. “I’m glad you asked. T-shirts. Removable Dirty Jersey tattoo strips. Mass-produce all of them mix-tape CDs I be putting out. Sell them shits for ten dollars a pop. This place is one big assembly line, son.”
I nod. “You put out more mix tapes than Lil’ Wayne and Game combined.”
“Hustlin’.”
More SUVs arrive. A cluster of more young people pass by. Fiasco stops and gives a dap to every one of them. But they all move past. His time is with me and me alone. I am moved by that, because contained in that cluster were two girls with more goods than Buffie the Body or any of the girls featured in XXL magazine’s “Eye Candy” spread.
Fiasco says, “Why don’t we step inside. I’ll show you the place.”
I follow, bopping with the finesse of Crash as I walk.
For some reason my awkwardness is dissolving with every second I spend in Fiasco’s presence. By the end of the day I’ll be ready to scoop up some fine young honey and beat down even the toughest dude in the bunch. Maybe.
Two supersized black dudes are just inside. They stand by a counter like one you would find in a store. One is in tight blue jeans, combat boots that aren’t Timberlands, and a black leather Fonz jacket that runs about two sizes too small for his enormous upper body. He looks to be in his mid-to late forties, but he’s in incredible shape. The other is younger, closer to Fiasco’s age, and is an obvious New York Jets fan. He has a wide nose, long dreadlocks that hang from under a green and white Jets cap to kiss the collar of a green and white Jets jacket. Like the black Fonz wannabe, he’s also in tight blue jeans and a pair of stomping boots. Nothing hip-hop about either of them.
But both of them are the size of a small continent.
I ask Fiasco, “Everybody you know have to shop for their clothes at the big ’n’ tall store?”
He laughs, nods. “Yup. My homies from around the way. The biggest and the baddest. I made sure of that.”
Fiasco shakes both of their hands. No dap. A handshake. “Holding down the fort?” he asks.
The Black Fonz says, “On it like white on rice.”
I’m new to this cool thing, every interaction is a lesson, and yet even I know not to ever repeat that phrase around anyone with swagger. I blame it on his age.
Mr. Jets adds, “I saw your wifey pull out of the lot. She ever gonna step a foot inside this place? I’m feeling put off, like I must have leprosy or something.”
Fiasco looks at the Black Fonz, frowns. “You had me until that wifey part. I started drowning you out then. I am single and enjoying it. Don’t ever get that twisted.”
Mr. Jets says, “Enjoying it, that’s an understatement.”
Fiasco smiles. Mr. Jets smiles, too. The Black Fonz is noticeably quiet and unemotional.
Mr. Jets says, “I think I’d settle down, though, if I had a female of Mya’s caliber sniffing my tail.”
Fiasco nods. “Mya’s fine. But she’s high maintenance. Difficult to satisfy. You really knew her, you wouldn’t want to be bothered. The girl has issues.” He looks at the Black Fonz. And, of course, the Black Fonz remains unemotional.
Mr. Jets asks, “How you figure?”
Fiasco says, “It is what it is. Like this Cuban girl I dealt with once. Making love to her was work. She was so proud of being a Latina, and you know she hated hip-hop, so I tried to be smart, got some Celia Cruz CDs to listen to while I tapped that Goya-bean booty.”
“So what happened?”
“No go. She couldn’t stand Celia Cruz. She liked Luther.”
The two of them laugh. The Black Fonz doesn’t even crack a smile. I wonder what’s wrong with the guy.
The laughter breaks. Fiasco says, “Mya’s like that. Difficult to please.”
Mr. Jets pulls on the back of his jacket, fidgets just a bit, and then says, “So tell us what song gets Mya in the mood?”
“For me to know and you to never find out,” Fiasco says. The frown on his face is clear. He’s not happy with the question.
The Black Fonz finally speaks. “You gonna let this guy keep salivating over your precious Mya, Fiasco?” He says Fiasco’s name like it’s an insult, like it’s a dirty word.
Mr. Jets puts his hands up. “I wouldn’t take it there. I was just saying.”
The Black Fonz says, “You were just saying quite a bit. If I was Fiasco, I’d knock out your fronts.” The Black Fonz eyeballs Fiasco like they have major beef. Fiasco eyeballs him back with the same intensity.
Seconds tick by without a response from either of them. They both assume the stance of bulls ready to run over anything in their way. I can feel the tension in the air. It’s as thick as Melyssa Ford, one of the video vixens plastered on my bedroom wall. That is quite thick, let me tell you.
“Mya can handle herself,” Fiasco says
after some time.
“She’s good peoples,” Mr. Jets agrees.
Fiasco nods. “No doubt.” His gaze falls on the Black Fonz.
The Black Fonz says, “Seen her drive outta here like she was running from something.”
Fiasco moves over to him, claps him on the shoulder. “Enough of Mya, okay?”
The Black Fonz stares at him for a moment and then nods.
Nothing more is said regarding Mya.
Fiasco turns to me. “What do you think of the place?”
I nod my approval.
The building is an old warehouse. It’s huge. My mind travels further into the bowels of the place. What could be in here that Mya dislikes so much?
Fiasco says, “My bad. Trent, Alonzo, this here is my lil’ homie, E.P.”
E.P.
My initials.
I like that.
Trent and Alonzo both shake my hand. Or, I should say, their hands swallow mine. I’ve been known to describe someone with large hands as having hands like baseball mitts. Crash has hands like that. That description wouldn’t fit Trent or Alonzo, though. Their hands are bigger than that. A whole lot bigger.
Trent says, “Here to get corrupted?” Trent is Mr. Jets.
Alonzo adds, “Another one bites the dust.” Alonzo is the Black Fonz, of course.
Fiasco shoos them off, says, “Don’t listen to these two country-western Negroes. Come fly with me, E.P.”
He moves away.
I nod at the two giants, follow Fiasco.
It isn’t long before I know exactly what that sound is I’ve been hearing. The one that sounds like gunfire.
It’s gunfire.
A large area is sectioned off as a shooting range. It’s packed with people laughing, smiling and dancing to the music blaring from mounted speakers. Doing everything but paying extra care to the guns they have in hand.
Fiasco says, “Point one on the syllabus for Hustlin’ 101. I charge these fools twenty bucks and they get ammunition, a firearm and a pack of five paper targets to take out their aggression on.”
I say, “There are an awful lot of them.”
A thought nudges at my mind. Feels like Fiasco is a rap Al Qaeda, training Bloods and Crips to destroy our community in the same way Osama bin Laden had his folks attack our buildings, our sense of safety, our very lives.
I nudge that thought away.
Fiasco says, “Economics lesson. Count heads and multiply that number by twenty. It’s the most beautifullest thing in the world.”
I say, “Stop biting Keith Murray.”
“Forgot you were a hip-hop historian.” Fiasco smiles. “I loved that song.”
“Heard the new one he’s got with Tyrese?”
Fiasco shakes his head. His mind isn’t on songs, rap comebacks, anything to do with the music. He motions with his head to another counter area by the shooting range. I look over.
There’s an NRA poster on the wall behind the counter, a large sign next to it with house rules for the shooting range. LOAD and HANDLE firearms ONLY WHEN YOU ARE READY TO SHOOT THEM. SIGHT and HEARING PROTECTION must be worn at ALL TIMES in the range area. The call “CEASE FIRE” or the sound of a WHISTLE means STOP SHOOTING IMMEDIATELY AND STEP AWAY FROM THE SHOOTING AREA.
Fiasco says, “Media paints us rappers as common criminals. I’m trying to educate my young people, make ’em more responsible in everything they do. They gonna pick up guns anyway….”
What Fiasco really wants me to believe, I think, is that Murdaa is actually going to be a socially conscious rapper.
I want to tell Fiasco that the young boy doing Soulja Boy’s dance with a firearm in his hand is breaking most of the shooting range rules. But I don’t.
Fiasco says, “Shooting stalls are ten yards long. Climate controlled, too. Have exhaust systems. Got every kind of pistol you can think of. Calibers run from .22 to AE50.”
I nod with a blank look in my eyes. The closest I’ve ever come in contact with gun talk is watching episodes of The Wire on HBO or listening to rap CDs. Crash is more evolved when it comes to guns. I don’t want to be evolved that way myself. I want no part of guns. I can’t see myself among those using the shooting range.
Fiasco continues, “This is a business. I’m an entity, I’m a business, hustlin’ like Fif, grindin’ until I get rich or die trying, trying to make a better way for myself and all the little shorties that come up like I did. This ain’t no BS spot, E.P. This much bigger than that, ya heard? Like Jay-Z said, ‘I’m a businessman.’”
I nod at his little speech.
Fiasco says, “You feelin’ me, E.P.? You understand where I’m coming from?”
“Yes.”
Off in another corner of the warehouse, a group of Fiasco’s Dirty Jersey boys are crowded around the two girls from earlier, the “Eye Candy” dimepieces who walked in after we arrived. Despite the girls’ curves, I realize they’re young. It’s in their faces, in their eyes. Wide-eyed innocence they call it. Too young for the Dirty Jersey boys, yet some serious romancing is taking place. I feel uncomfortable watching it transpire. Then Mr. Jets and the Black Fonz arrive on the scene. Good, I think. They’ll clean it up, keep it PG-13. To my surprise, something else happens. The two girls drift off through a door marked PRIVATE with the Black Fonz on their heels. Mr. Jets stands guard over the door like the president’s Secret Service detail.
I try to shake the image of the Black Fonz’s hands on the young girls’ butts as he ushered them into the PRIVATE room.
Fiasco claps me on the shoulder, changes my focus.
He says, “So, seriously, you wanna really be down with Dirty Jersey, son? I’m willing to seriously put you on. Let you deep in the fold. And I don’t do that for everyone. Usually it takes a long time before I offer that respect to anyone. I’m not one for quick ascension. You gotta earn your stripes in my camp. But you, E.P., you have already. I don’t know what it is. Maybe that you remind me of myself. Anyway, you wanna be put on?”
I look around the warehouse. Gunfire and excited voices are the sound track. Murdaa music. I look at the door marked PRIVATE. Unthinkable things could be happening in there. Most likely are happening in there. Two girls my age or close to it. Is that something I’d want to get down with? Can my conscience pretend that part of the Dirty Jersey situation doesn’t exist?
The flip side?
I’d be part of a very select crowd. I’d be special. The cool boys and girls would envy me.
I look at Fiasco. “Yes. I want to be put on with your crew.”
I don’t think another thought about the two young girls in that PRIVATE room with the Black Fonz.
Sister
Vera was dead on her feet, in a pair of turned-over Reeboks with filthy shoelaces. Best she could afford on her meager waitress wages. She had other expenses that were more important than the sneakers, like the rent and electricity, and so she sacrificed with her footwear. She was thin from all the time standing and getting very little food in her belly, bird meals mostly, a peck here and a peck there. Dirty blond hair, hadn’t seen a shampoo in a month of Sundays. It carried the smells of the diner: eggs, bacon, coffee, the Virginia Slims Vera inhaled in the back alley whenever she got two minutes to herself. Vera wasn’t pretty, and never had been. The wrinkles she’d acquired in the past few years were crueler than God’s original mess-up of her face. But none of that mattered. She was efficient in her job, somewhat friendly, always turned on and aware. You had to have that—awareness—working the late shift, when all the crazies stumbled into the diner.
The place had taken two falls in the seven years Vera’d worked there. Guys had come in with pump-action shotguns the second time. Like something from a movie. Vera couldn’t figure out how anyone could be so dumb and reckless, taking out a diner early in the a.m., when there were mostly singles and fives in the cash drawer, officers in and out for coffee. It took the police less than an hour to haul those two dummies in and book ’em. It hadn’t taken much effort at all. Ve
ra’d kept calm through the entire ordeal, came out of it unharmed. She’d shown up early for her next scheduled shift, as usual, already worn to the bone as she walked in the door.
Vera was thinking about all that when two more patrons walked in. The chimes above the door jingled. Vera looked up and surveyed the damage to come. Turned on and aware, as always, she figured these two wouldn’t pose much problem. Big black guy who looked to be in his late thirties or early forties at most; you couldn’t really tell with the blacks because they aged so gracefully. He could have been fifty for all Vera knew. What was that saying she’d heard? It was so spot-on she’d said she’d never forget it, and yet here she was reaching back to find it. Oh yeah, Black don’t crack. It didn’t, either. Vera envied that about them. White cracked like a lightbulb that fell and hit the floor. Roll of the dice what life you were granted, Vera supposed.
With the guy was a young girl, definitely in her teens, all full of innocence. Beautiful girl, Vera noticed, but something off about her, too. It was in the girl’s eyes. Vera recognized that look. She’d spotted it in her mirror more times than she cared to admit.
Vera directed the two of them to a corner booth. She watched intently as they took their seats. The guy had this smile on his face that wouldn’t quit. The girl couldn’t return it. Couldn’t. Not wouldn’t. Couldn’t. She didn’t have the strength or desire to even try.
What’s up with them? Vera wondered.
Daddy-and-daughter squabble? She wanted her friends over for a pajama party and then the Hannah Montana concert the next day, Daddy wanted her completing her trig homework and folding the laundry?
Could that be it, something like that?
Vera knew better.
It was all right there if you paid attention to the signs. Vera read ’em like tea leaves. How he kept his gaze on the girl—it was almost uncomfortable. And more telling, how the girl fought so hard not to look at him in return. There was tension there. Sadly, Vera noticed, it was of a sexual nature. Not good.
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