Magic City

by Trick Daddy

  My father was home for only a couple of weeks before he was sent back to prison. He was living the hustler’s life, as people call it. It was one of the more than ten times he made it back to prison. So Lynn was stuck with me and my yet unborn brother, Non Stop. She didn’t run from the responsibility. Like Pearl, Lynn had that type of die-hard resiliency that black women embody. I believe God knew the hardships faced by black men would leave their women out in the cold. So he made them strong. The strength black women possess can’t be found elsewhere. Throughout history they’ve had to defend households while their men were carted off to slavery and later the industrial factories. In my hood the dope game was to blame for the absenteeism.

  Lynn was a Seventh-Day Adventist. She spent weekends in church. When she wasn’t there, she worked the graveyard shift. We alternated days to take care of the household. I took some days off at school. She took some days off at work. Lynn tried to provide the best home possible for me where Pearl left off.

  Meanwhile, in the classroom Mr. Fudge worked hard to get me back into high school. The school board had actually given me another shot. I won’t ever say something too damaging about the Miami-Dade public school system. They really tried with Maurice Young. After I left Jan Mann, I was sent to another alternative program, called JR Lee, but sure enough I was kicked out of there, too. Project Lee was the last stop on the dropout train. It was where they sent your sorry ass when no other school wanted you. I thought the place would be a mini-vacation before I got permanently thrown out of public high schools. The streets were waiting. I was looking forward to hustling a full twenty-four-hour day. I went to my first class and did what was expected of me. I went to sleep.

  “Boy, get your ass up! This look like the damn Holiday Inn to you?” The hand at my shirt collar woke me indeed. Mr. Fudge was bearing down on me like a pit bull at his last meal. I clutched my pen. “I wish you would try and stab me! I’ll knock your ass out!” Fudge yelled. “Walking round here looking like the sorry nigga folks think you are.”

  Everyone in the class sat upright. I thought Fudge was out of his mind. The guy had to have a screw or two loose. Didn’t he know the last teacher brave enough to use me as his manhood sounding board ended up with a concussion and put on bed rest for two weeks?

  He answered my thoughts. “Trust me, I ain’t Tuttle’s punk ass! I’ll get me evil on you, boy. If you wanna fuck your life up, do it on your own time!” he fumed.

  I straightened up, then contemplated fighting. But something about Fudge intrigued me. The dude came to class wearing Dickies shorts and a Malcolm X T-shirt. His shoes were cream-colored wallabies. He reminded me of a hustler in the street. He also had heart.

  Fudge was no more than five feet one inch, if he was even five feet. In that class, filled to capacity with misfits, he was taking a big risk by threatening a student. Gangs of students jumped teachers routinely. A good number of teachers spent time in the hospital. Teachers in those alternative programs were actually risking their lives, showing up for an ungodly $30,000 annual salary. But that’s another story. I could spend hours discussing the exploitation of the folks we entrust to educate our kids.

  When Fudge noticed he’d got my attention, he fixed my collar. He walked back to the chalkboard, grabbed a piece of chalk, and wrote in cap-size letters: S-T-U-P-I-D. Students squirmed in their seats.

  “That’s how you look to folks. You look like a bunch of dummies,” said Fudge. “You walk around laughing while you throw your lives away. Are you stupid, young blood?” Fudge pointed the chalk my way.

  “Nah,” I replied.

  I aced most math quizzes when I gave even a 10 percent effort. English and grammar were my favorite subjects. With all the bullshit going on in my hood, I enjoyed writing short stories. Those fictional characters I made up took me far away from the Beans. In minutes, Fudge got all of us teenage misfits to sit transfixed, hanging on every word he uttered.

  His story mirrored most of ours. He told us about growing up in the projects. We could relate to Fudge. Folks think ghetto children always need some ballplayer or movie star to pop up in the hood for kids to listen. Kids see right through that. They may be excited for the first ten minutes, but they know that celebrity is going back to his fantasy life far away from where they are. It doesn’t take a million bucks in your bank account to be a hero. All one has to do is take an interest. Fudge gave a damn.

  Most of the kids in Project Lee just wanted someone to piss their way. They wanted someone to take notice for five seconds. That’s why you have to pay attention to kids when they begin to misbehave. They spend years kicking and screaming for attention. When that doesn’t work, they shoot and rob. By that time the courts say lock their sorry asses up. They can get all the attention they need staring eye to eye with a crazed cellmate. Fudge told us about our roots in Africa.

  “That’s right. We were kings and queens before they hauled us over here in chains,” Fudge would say. “Young blood, you got royal blood flowing through your veins.” Fudge said I was related to kings and queens. For a kid growing up in the Beans amid the addicts, hookers, and winos, this knowledge was earth-shattering. That some young dude my age who looked like me back in Ghana was being called prince rocked my world. He probably had some hot girl powdering his pecker.

  Up until that point, we only learned that we were slaves. Black history began and ended with my ancestor calling some white guy massa. Fudge’s lessons gave me confidence. I really looked up to Fudge. He made me believe I could become something worthwhile. I completed my eighth-grade requirements and earned my seat in the ninth grade. I was there only several weeks before the inevitable happened. I just wasn’t cut out for the classroom.

  19

  Going Down Like That

  GHOUL’S PARK WAS DEFINITELY THE PLACE TO CHILL with the crew on the weekends. Unfortunately, rivalries were born there as well. The weekend before school started, I was hanging with the crew. By now, Dante, Tronne, Tater, Bodeem, and I were a bona fide band of brothers. The morning ritual began with a dollar’s worth of chicken wings at the corner store. Whoever had the cash picked up the tab. Nigel and Onk joined us in the park that Saturday. They were always close by, but were more focused on sports than trouble. If they had a problem with guys from the streets, we handled it for them. That Saturday an argument ensued about a topic of gargantuan importance:

  “Bruh, I’m telling you, Kim got the fattest ass this side of Perrine. I wanna get me a little piece of that right there,” said Dante.

  “Nah, bruh, Kiesha definitely got her beat,” Tronne chimed in.

  We all nodded in agreement. Then Big Black and Shrimp came walking toward us. Black was a guy one may call the resident hood star. He was a year younger than me, but got respect from Hollywood and the other hustlers down south. Black was one of those cats whose heart was that of a man twice his size. He took a liking to me and it was much appreciated. Anybody Black cosigned was a force to be reckoned with. The ground shook when Black walked. Some people have a presence that commands respect. Black was that type of person. He wasn’t having it. His right-hand man, Shrimp, was just as respected.

  “Everything good?” asked Black.

  “Yeah, Dante over here saying Kim got a fatter ass than Kiesha,” said Tronne.

  “Why y’all don’t ask Maurice? He hit both of ’em,” Black said, turning toward me.

  I shook my head. It was no secret that I was popular with the girls. I was Hollywood’s younger brother. He had girls from Homestead to Fort Lauderdale and every town in between. They had sisters. They liked my eclectic persona.

  I know it sounds suspect that I would describe myself in such a colorful fashion, but I always stood out. I added my own style to the fresh gear Wood laced me with. I wore a dashiki shirt with my black Dickies pants and topped it all off with a gleaming gold-nugget bracelet. Chicks dug my style. Women always go for the guys that are confident enough to stand on their own. Don’t follow the crowd if you want the ladies. Yo
u don’t have to take my word for it. Go do your research. Some of my girls I was really serious about even if I couldn’t admit it to the crew.

  But in the hood a guy wasn’t given the option of sharing his girlfriend. It was a requirement. My friend had the right to my girl in much the same way he had a right to my chicken wings. That I actually had, and have always had, the utmost respect for women was a secret I kept from the crew. I couldn’t have them thinking I was soft. I treated the ladies with class. That was my secret. A ten-step handbook to pimping doesn’t exist. I was charming. I despised the way older men took advantage of younger women. They filled their impressionable minds with all sorts of dreams, then left them out in the cold nine months pregnant without a pot to piss in. It still ticks me off to this day when I see a teenage girl on the bus stop stuck with a baby carriage, bearing the weight of the world on her shoulders. If I could send a heat-seeking missile toward every deadbeat father on the planet, I would. Put everything I love on that. Women like sweetness, and I was all the above. Of course I kept it gangster with my crew. So they had liberties to all my girls. Well, all of my girls except Tiffany. I had a fondness for her. She was about five feet five inches with a caramel complexion and the brightest brown eyes this side of the Mississippi. Honestly, I was crazy about her. So I tried hard to keep her far away from Lou and Ty.

  Lou and Ty took the concept of “it ain’t no fun if the homeys can’t have none” too far. Some older cats just didn’t take no for an answer. I should have known better when I decided to get some sugar over there. My stepmother didn’t take kindly to having all of my “little fast hussies” as she called them running through the house. I’d been wining and dining Tiffany for months, acting like her real-life Casanova, shelling out money like I was an ATM. It was Wood’s money. He thought I was spending it at the arcade. When she finally decided to give me the goodies, I couldn’t wait. I needed a place to do the do. Lou and Ty told me I could get busy by their pad for $50. It was pretty steep, but I was hard-pressed to see what Tiffany had up under that skirt.

  When we showed up, those two were in the living room bagging crack rocks and counting money. Perfect. It seemed to be the only time Lou and Ty wouldn’t talk your head off. Tiffany was scared, shaking like drugstore jelly.

  “You sure we’re okay in here?” she whispered, tugging on my shirt.

  I couldn’t hear anything. I was too busy imagining the positions I saw in that Kama Sutra book I’d found in Wood’s bedroom. When those chicks left Wood’s bedroom, they looked like they had seen the pearly gates, so I studied that book through and through.

  “I don’t like the way they’re looking at me,” she repeated.

  “Girl, those fools ain’t paying attention to you,” I said.

  They were.

  I led her up the bedroom stairs. All those earrings, movies, and sneakers she enjoyed were about to pay off. I started kissing on her neck, then delved down toward Eden. I reached in my back pocket. It wasn’t there. I nearly tore through my pocket.

  You have to be kidding me. My rubbers weren’t there.

  I was determined though.

  “No, I don’t wanna get pregnant,” Tiffany fumed.

  “We can do the old-fashioned birth control,” I coaxed.

  “Hell no, that’s what my cousin Kima used and she got three kids!”

  I raced down the stairs like a runaway slave and asked Lou and Ty if they had any. Of course they didn’t. What girl in her right mind would let those greasy two huff and puff on top of her? I bolted up the block toward the corner store. The line was long as heck. I waited and waited. A million thoughts ran through my head. What if Tiffany had second thoughts? The old man in line in front of me was getting his Powerball tickets scratched off. That always puzzled me. In every corner store in the hood, someone is always playing the lotto. I bet rich folks don’t play the lotto that much. Imagine if those folks saved the money they spent playing lotto. Right now this dude’s lucky-number dreams were making my muff-diving a fading reality. A good fifteen minutes had passed when I finally banked the corner and reached the entrance to the house.

  Tiffany was limping down the stairs shaking. I ran toward her.

  She started wailing on me. “They wouldn’t stop! They wouldn’t stop!” she cried.

  I tried to hug her but she punched me in the face. I ran inside. Ty was sitting on the couch with his shirt off. Lou was in the bathroom whistling. If I could have killed those two that day, I would have, but I knew better.

  “What you all bent outta shape for? Fuck that ho, bruh,” said Lou.

  “That cherry sure was sweet though!” added Ty.

  Taking a teenage girl’s honor was a joke to them. They were shucking and jiving like they had just ate a slice a pizza. Shit like that happened all the time. Girls in the hood fall victim to a world that doesn’t value them. If black boys in the ghetto aren’t worth shit on society’s scale, where do you think that leaves the girls? If you think the hood is scary to a boy, imagine a young girl growing up fatherless. Imagine trekking those narrow alleys, dodging and sidestepping advances from determined pimps and dazed addicts. Picture the tugs on your skirt, pinches and touches in private places. Rape is rampant in the hood. The harsh truth is the victims aren’t really a priority so the police don’t investigate.

  That day on the bus Tiffany didn’t speak. She sat numb. Her sobs faded into cold contempt as she stared off into space. I wanted to ask her if there was anything I could do, but I knew there wasn’t. I took her there. It was my fault. We were just two young kids caught in a teenage moment, but in our environment simple joys could become lifelong nightmares in the blink of an eye.

  We never spoke again. I tried calling, but her sister would answer. Eventually I got the point. Try explaining to someone’s family that their daughter got raped because you left her alone with crazed drug dealers. You can’t. I chalked it up for what it was. I kept that day a secret from my crew. I didn’t want dudes humiliating Tiffany more than she had already been.

  20

  Represent

  AFTER BLACK SPILLED THE BEANS, THE CREW STARTED their interrogation.

  “Damn, bruh! What it shake like? Kim look like she got hydraulics on that booty!” joked Dante. “How you got that ho to give it up?”

  “A true pimp doesn’t give out the tools to his trade,” I joked. “One day I’ll give a handbook on pimp economics.”

  We all laughed. Black and Shrimp gave daps and headed toward the avenue. Those two were always on the move. I kind of knew they were destined to end up in some deep trouble. They had that aura around them that scared the living daylight out of folks.

  Then I heard someone yell my name. Well, they didn’t exactly yell my name. It sounded more like “Hey, fuck nigga! Yeah, you with the dashiki on!”

  It was about that time.

  I mentioned earlier that when someone moves to another hood, some resident thugs always think they should try the new kid on the block. I had a rep already. Furthermore, I came from the Beans. The projects down south were no different from those in the city and just as deadly. But, truth be told, the Beans were more well-known, so a brawl with any kid moving to Ghouls was a sounding board for any local hood star on the come-up. I had seen these dudes before. I didn’t pay them any mind the first time they gave me an unfriendly glance. They were trying to check my temperature so to speak.

  In the hood softness is weakness. If someone scares easily, that someone is as good as dead. If I backed down to a challenge, this crew would kick my ass for the rest of eternity and so would everyone else. Real recognizes real. A gangster won’t go through the trouble of testing another gangster because he knows the hell that’s soon to follow. So folks prey on the weak. It could be something as simple as a guy asking to borrow money. Every time I said yes, that lets him know just how much sugar I have running through my veins. Soon I would end up paying his child support and getting extorted. Those cats in Ghouls saw my lack of response as an opening. T
hey didn’t know I was trying to save them from me. Back then, the thoughts I had running through my mind were downright scary. I didn’t want to just fight you. I wanted to maim you. I was suffering on the inside. It carried over in my rage.

  I was sent down here to escape that madness. These dudes weren’t going to let me escape. Dante clenched his fist. Tronne and Tater did the same. Just five minutes ago we were deep in conversation about the finer curves of life. Now we were staring down a pack of wolves ready to break loose.

  I struck first, smashing a Heineken bottle on the guy’s head. Blood splattered everywhere. I shoved him to the ground and pounded his head into the dirt. I choked him. The more I hit him, the more I felt better. His crew scattered like they saw the devil. I figured as much from our first encounter. They looked like their hearts pumped Kool-Aid. They followed this loudmouth for confidence.

  I loved beating bullies I knew couldn’t fight. I ran up close and punched them, taking away their first line of defense. It cut past all the loud talk and gibber-jabber. It’s the same fighting technique Kimbo uses. He was a head buster when we were growing up, so it’s not surprising that he’s now demolishing opponents on a worldwide level.

  By now, I was really getting the best of the loudmouth. Dante grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me off the guy, now spitting up his own blood.

  “Bruh, you’re about to kill him,” warned Dante. “The shit ain’t that deep.”

  “That’s what I want to do. I wanna kill him!”

  My crew had to help Dante pry me off. When they did, I shrugged my shoulders and pushed Dante. I turned my back and headed toward the avenue. At that moment my crew realized that I was down for pretty much whatever those harsh streets would throw at us. Tears swelled in my eyes as I stormed up the block kicking bottles and soda cans.