by Cash
“Nah, bitch, we don’t need to do shit. You need to get a pen and some paper and handle your business, before I have to snatch a hole in your ass!”
When Rayne turned in her written “assignment”, each page was streaked with tears.
Emily hadn’t been spared Khalil’s wrath, either. Snow Bunny had went on a two-day date with one of her usual “friends”, without letting Khalil know where she was at. It didn’t matter that Emily called Khalil up and handed him six thousand and five hundred dollars upon her return. He accepted the trap then promptly boxed her muthafuckin’ ears.
Q had pulled up in the projects. His whip was immediately swarmed by kids as usual.
“Back up, shorties. I got y’all,” he smiled. He was never stressed when the kids bum rushed him for ice cream and candy money. He took time out to pass out a few dollars to each of them before continuinig about his business.
When Q finally made it to Corlette’s door, she met with a kiss.
“What it do, shawdy?”
“I’m good, baby.” She smiled.
“Y’all ready?” he asked.
“Yeah, let me go get Alize out the bedroom.”
Corlette handed him their daughter’s diaper bag and her own overnight bag.
Q was taking Corlette and the baby home with him to spend a few days with him at his new crib. Before he had copped a new spot Corlette refused to go with him to the old one that he and Persia had shared. Now that he had the new spot, Corlette was happy, but Persia hadn’t walked away meekly.
Two days after he had kicked Persia’s ass and put her out, Q came home and got swarmed by po-po. Persia had sworn out a warrant against him for domestic violence.
“Vindictive bitch!” Q had cursed after he was cuffed and on his way to jail.
He called Corlette to bail him out and she didn’t hesitate. She and Miss Jean stepped right to their business, and Q was back out the next day. Miss Jean had been taxing him ever since.
Q strapped his infant daughter into the baby seat in the backseat of his new 600 series Benz he’d just copped two weeks ago. The new whip was just to let Persia know he wasn’t faded. Corlette settled into the passenger seat and immediately ejected T.I. out of the CD player and replaced it with Monica—that was her girl.
“Let’s compromise, shawdy,” said Q. “How ‘bout we listen to some John Legend?”
“I’m feelin’ him,” said Corlette.
So Q slid in the CD Get Lifted.
John Legend’s melodic voice filled the inside of the Benz. Corlette closed her eyes and let the peanut butter, soft leather seats wrap her in a sweet embrace.
The windows were up and the air was on low. The smell of the brand new interior was accentuated by the coconut air freshener emitting from the vents. John Legend was singing: Baby when I used to love you . . . there’s nothing I wouldn’t do . . . I went through the fire for you . . . anything you asked me to . . .
Corlette reached over and held Q’s hand, affectionately. She hoped like hell he realized how much she loved him. She knew that he was probably still hurting over Persia. That didn’t worry her, though. She would help him get over the pain of Persia’s trifling infidelities.
“I love you, Q.”
The words came from her heart.
Q affectionately squeezed her hand, as he came to a stop sign, about to leave Thomasville Heights. A car pulled up beside them and the window slid down.
All of a sudden, without warning, the Benz was sprayed with a burst of gunfire. Splacka! Splacka! Splacka! Splacka! Splacka! Splacka! The car screeched away. Q followed, bustin’ back with his nine.
Corlette was screaming. She had been shot in the face! But those screams were nothing compared to screams of agony that came from her when she looked in the back seat to check on baby Alize. The car seat was covered in blood. It seemed unreal that so much blood could’ve come from an infant.
Sadly, though, it was real. Alize had been hit by two slugs.
With Corlette screaming hysterically, Q drove like a mad man, rushing his lady and their daughter to the hospital. Alize, just four months old, was pronounced dead on arrival. Corlette, in addition to having been shot in the face, had gone into shock.
Police and news hounds were thick outside the church where the funeral was held. At the service Corlette was inconsolable. “They killed my baby! They killed my precious little baby!” Her face was disfigured and swollen, from the hollow point she caught in the jaw. It had gone through her jaw, knocked out several teeth, and severed the tip of her tongue. So when she talked it was with a discernable lisp.
Q held Corlette throughout the entire service. The whole hood was there. Most of them genuinely grieving over the senseless loss of life. Silent tears streamed down the mourners’ faces as they watched Corlette jump up screaming, “Why Lord? Why did you let them kill my baby? Please take me instead. I don’t want to live without my precious daughter,” she bellowed tearfully.
In the days following the funeral, Corlette spent hours just sitting at home on the couch staring at a collage of Alize and fingering her baby’s clothes. Her body rocked with loud sobs. She felt that she could not go on living.
Corlette repeatedly cried. “I wanna be with my baby.”
Q and Miss Jean tried their best to console her, but Corlette’s grief was immense. As soon as they left her alone in the house, she took an overdose of painkillers. Q came home and found her passed out on the bathroom floor. He rushed her to the hospital where she had to have her stomach pumped and was committed for twenty-four hour suicidal observation.
When Corlette was no longer on suicide watch and released from the hospital, Q moved her in with him. Miss Jean moved into the new high rise apartments that had been built where the notorious projects called Carver Homes once sat. The Housing Authority had threatened to evict her from the old place, accusing her and Corlette of harboring drugs for Q. So Q just moved Miss Jean to avoid the drama.
Word on the street was that the twins had been responsible for the shootings. Snitches in the hood dropped dime to po-po, and the twins got snatched up and arrested during a roadblock set up in the projects, close to where their grandmother lived. But the police didn’t have any evidence on which to hold them beyond seventy-two hours for questioning. DeWayne was released. DeShawn was held on a warrant for aggravated assault in an unrelated case.
As soon as Khalil heard, he was on his way to Q’s crib. “Shawdy, you gotta get yaself back on point. For real, bruh. This ain’t accomplishing shit,” Khalil said.
He was at Q’s crib. Since the funeral, Q had been surviving on Newport’s and Seagram’s VO. Dozens of ashtrays ran over with cigarette butts, and empty vodka bottles were everywhere. Corlette was barricaded off in the bedroom. She wasn’t suicidal but she was still drowning in grief. Add to that, she had shattered every mirror in the townhouse, unable to face her own image. Her once beautiful face was hideous. But plastic surgery could correct that if she and Q would pull themselves together and handle their business.
Khalil brought Rayne and Sinnamon along with him to scrub and clean Q’s crib. While they went about that task, Khalil poured out every drop of liquor he found. Q was sitting on the couch in a near catatonic state.
Khalil went upstairs and knocked on the bedroom door.
“Corlette,” he called out. “Shawdy, you don’t have to open the door or come out of there, just come to the door, close enough to hear what I have to say.”
He heard no sound or movement.
“Please, Corlette. Just give me five minutes, then you can get back in bed and I’ll go away. This is Khalil.”
He heard moving around in there.
“Go away, Khalil. I don’t want to talk. I just want Alize back.”
She was at the door. Khalil could feel her weight pressed up against it. And he could hear her crying.
“Corlette, I’m not gonna lie to you,” he said soothingly. “Nobody has the power to bring Alize back. She’s in God’s arms now,
shawdy. Can’t nothing harm her no more. Me and Q gotta step to them niggaz who hurt y’all, shawdy—that’s the street law. But he can’t do nothing in the condition he’s in. If you don’t pull yourself together, both of y’all gon’ keep going downhill. But you stronger than that, baby girl. Q needs you to be strong for him, shawdy. I never liked that bitch Persia. I always knew she was only around for the money. For real, Corlette. Pop peeped that, too. We both peeped that you are genuine, and got real love for Q. Well, shawdy, now is the time to show how official you are. I know you hurtin’, but you’re strong. Q needs you, shawdy.”
After a while there were no more sounds of movement in the townhouse. No sounds of Khalil’s or his women’s voices. Corlette knew that they had gone.
Corlette saw that the mirror over the bedroom dresser had been shattered into one huge cobweb. She knew that she must have done it, but could not remember having done so. In the bathroom, she found the mirror over the sink cobwebbed, too. The same for the full-length mirror on the bathroom’s door. Seeing her reflection distorted in the cracked mirrors amplified the hideousness of the scar on her face left from surgery. With the mangled tip of her tongue she felt the gummed spaces in her mouth where her teeth had been shot out.
Corlette had never been vain or conceited, though she had always known that her looks were much more than average. Now, she felt, Q might not find her desirable any longer. She certainly didn’t feel beautiful anymore. But Corlette was determined not to add to her grief by drowning in self-pity anymore. She would just have to make herself as beautiful as circumstances would allow, and trust that Q’s desire for her was more than skin deep.
Corlette stepped into the shower and turned the water on full blast, as cold as she could stand it. The cold shower invigorated her. She wiggled into a tight pair of low riding Apple Bottom jeans, and pulled on a baby tee. She combed her hair into a ponytail and applied gloss to her lips.
Q sat on the couch, refilling his glass with liquor that had somehow avoided Khalil’s eyes. He looked up to see Corlette coming down the stairs. He immediately noticed that she had fixed herself up. When she came up to where he sat, he saw that for the first time in weeks there was life in her eyes. She kneeled down on the floor, between his knees, and gently took the glass of Seagrams from his hands.
“No more of this, baby,” she said softly but firmly. “We’re going to be okay.” Her lisp was pronounced, but she was not self-conscious of it. “We have to pull ourselves together . . . for the memory of Alize.”
At the mention of their baby’s name Q hugged Corlette, leaned his head down on her shoulder and said, “I’m sorry. I was slippin’. I should’ve never had y’all in the car with me. I knew the twins had beef because of what my brother did to their grandmother. I should’ve moved y’all away from Thomasville . . . ”Q said.
“It’s okay, boo,” Corlette soothed, kissing his tears.
“No, it ain’t. I wish I would’ve caught those slugs instead of you . . . and . . . my . . . sweet . . . baby . . . girl.”
“She’s in God’s arms now; no one can ever hurt her again,” Corlette said with conviction.
For the next five minutes they held each other and cried. When their tears subsided
Corlette kissed her man with the emotion of all that they were going through together. Later she bathed Q, and washed his dreads.
When Corlette was done, Q took her to bed and made slow, passionate love to her. He kissed her deep, paying no attention to the severed tip of her tongue. When he placed soft kisses all over her face, he was tryna assure her that he still desired her despite her scar. They made love to each other slow and long. Later, when they lay spooned together, they both knew that they were ready to pull themselves back together, aided by a bond to each other that they vowed never to let anyone or anything come between.
Chapter Twenty Three
Q bounced back with a new focus and determination that was born out of all that he’d been through lately. If he didn’t know the streets wasn’t nothing to play with before, he definitely knew it now. He was on a mission to get it like never before. Either he was gonna claim the streets or the streets was gonna claim him. Wasn’t no in-between anymore, it was all or nothing. He couldn’t lose now because he no longer feared death. He believed that God would judge him by his heart, not so much his deeds.
Because his name was good in the streets, it wasn’t difficult for Q to plug into a new connect. The prices weren’t as sweet as Fazio’s, but the quality of the product was comparable, so Q rolled with it. He no longer fucked with consignment, so he was definitely his own man. Fuck Fazio, Q was glad he had robbed that nigga now. Fazio had shown there is no loyalty in the game.
Q stepped his game up even larger than before. Niggas saw in his eyes that he wasn’t taking no shorts. In the hood they said he was chasing death, so only a fool would test his guns.
Q had sent Corlette to a plastic surgeon in Miami, recommended by Cha Cha’s lady friend, to have her grill fixed. Now, he was tryna locate that bitch nigga DeWayne. He had heard the twin be creeping through Thomasville sometimes to visit his grandmother. He had been staking out the spot, hoping to catch twin slipping, but hadn’t had any luck.
Q pulled up to B-Man’s spot in an incognito whip. He got out and went to B-Man’s front door.
Gwen answered his knock.
“Where my fam at?”
Gwen stood in the doorway, like she wasn’t gonna let him in. He pushed right on pass her. He hadn’t talked to B-Man since that day in B-Man’s hospital room.
His eyes grew large when he saw B-Man at the kitchen table sucking the glass dick. The smell of burning crack was unmistakable. Q had cooked an assload of that shit in his young lifetime, plus the smell of crack being smoked remained imprinted in his memory from way back when Rapheal and Black Girl used to get high around him and his brothers.
“I didn’t let him in!” cried out Gwen. “He pushed right pass me, like he the police or something!”
“Shut up, bitch! You got my fam smoking this shit,” Q checked her junkie ass.
“Don’t be callin’ my lady no bitch,” said B-Man.
Then he put the glass dick back in his mouth; there was no sense in tryna hide shit now.
“Fam, let’s go. Walk out this muthafucka with me, and let this junkie ho make it the best way she know how. Real talk, B-Man, she ain’t doing nothing but dragging you down in the gutter with her crackhead ass!”
“Kick rocks, nigga!” replied B-Man.
“Nah, pimp, I ain’t leaving without you. You better than this, shawdy. Fuck the shit that went down between us; it ain’t even about that no more.”
“I said, kick rocks, nigga! Do you, and let me do me!” B-Man snapped.
“I can’t do dat, shawdy, we fam! What, I s’pose to turn my back and let you go out bad? We blood, fool! I love you, nigga. I ain’t finna’ let this shit take you out like it did Black Girl. Fuck dat! Let’s bounce, nigga.”
B-Man was quiet, as though he was considering leaving with Q. Gwen went over to him, threw her arms around him as if he was her life after.
“Don’t leave me, baby!” she pleaded through parched lips. “How he gon’ come over here and tell you I’m bringing you down? If he got so much love for you why he shoot you?”
Her words seemed to make B-Man reconsider. Q saw their effect on his brother.
“Check it, pimp,” Q softened his voice and switched strategy. “You can always come back. Just leave with me now, to get your head together. Let’s go fuck wit’ Khalil for a minute.”
Then he said to Gwen, “If you love my brother you’ll encourage him to go.”
Gwen refused to do that, though. Without B-Man, who was jacking to support their drug habits, she would be ass out.
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere,” B-Man said.
Q wouldn’t give up. “Bruh, I need you to ride wit’ me on that nigga, Twin. Your head gotta be right to handle that. For real, shawdy, you the only nigga I fuck
s wit’ like dat.”
“I told you, I don’t fuck wit’ you no more. Ain’t shit changed, nigga.”
“Bruh, that pussy ass nigga killed my daughter.”
“So what? That’s yo’ loss not mine!”
B-Man’s callousness hit Q like a slug to the chest.
“Fool, if you hadna involved Corlette in that bullshit, none of that shit would’ve jumped off!”
“Charge it to the game, nigga,” B-Man replied. “You a big-money nigga, go buy yourself another daughter.”
Q reached under his jacket, pulled out his burner, ready to nod B-Man and his junkie bitch. As he was about to squeeze the trigger, Black Girl’s words came to mind. “Believe it or not, home is often where the hate is.”
“I’ma let you have that, shawdy,” Q told his brother. He tucked his burner back into his waistband, turned and walked out. A hot tear slid down the side of his face as he got into his car.
Khalil and Rapheal could only shake their heads when Q related things to them.
Khalil said, “I can’t believe B-Man let that punk bitch trick him on the dope.”
“Believe it,” Q reiterated. “Real talk, I almost slumped his stupid ass. I mean, when he said that shit about I can go buy myself another daughter.”
“That dope got him talking out of his head,” concluded Khalil, not wanting to believe there was any other explanation for their brother’s coldhearted words.
The next day Khalil went by B-Man’s crib himself, to see if he could talk some sense into their brother. He had to bang on the door for damn near twenty minutes to get an answer. He knew someone was at home, he’d heard voices inside when he first walked up to the door.
The weather had changed; it was now cool outdoors so Khalil sported a thick leather jacket, with a matching leather fitted cap.
Finally, the door opened.
“What you want?” B-Man asked.
“Step aside.”
When B-Man didn’t move Khalil said, “Don’t test me, bruh, or one of us going to the morgue today.”
“It ain’t gon’ be me.”