The Cook Up

by D. Watkins

  The sun faded and the crowd thickened. Young Block took that Camry out to grab us some re-released Barkley sneakers and I was stuck hearing Nick go on and on about this connect. A dark Benz rode past us, circled the block, and then stopped. A pretty woman peeked out. “Dee, come over here!” My niggas embarrassed me with “Ohhhhhhhhh,” on top of “Who dat? Who dat?”

  I squinted. It was Asia. “That’s my whip, man, y’all hop off my dick!” I yelled, running to the car. Nick shouted something like, “No, this nigga didn’t!” I made Asia pull off before my friends could get a look.

  “Oh, my God! You hang out there with those crazy people. I thought you were nice! Do you want to drive your car?”

  “I am nice and you can drive. Are we going back to the office to settle up now? Or you wanna chill with me for a little while?” I asked.

  “Chill with you? I don’t even know you. Plus you aren’t really my type,” she said, making the left onto Route 40. I asked her how could she know that I’m not her type if she doesn’t know me. That whole statement sounded stupid. I told her to run me past my crib so I could get the money to pay for the cars. We pulled up to my house and I ran inside and grabbed an empty Crown Royal bag. I stuffed it with about forty thousand dollars in hundreds. I hopped back in the car, and we headed to the dealership. She told me that it was nothing personal but she didn’t date African American men.

  “Aren’t you black? I don’t get it.”

  She then told me that she was from Ethiopia. She was a Towson student and quickly learned that African American men weren’t men. They were scum. They had a monopoly on ignorance, AIDS, and were not good at anything but being ignorant and getting AIDS. She wanted no part of that. No part of the flash, no part of stupid rap music, no part of African American culture in general. She dated a white guy named Ralph. We pulled up at Seth’s. I told her that some of us are different and every race has good and bad people. Then I wished her luck with her studies and completed my transaction.

  The old me would’ve tried to explain African Americans to her. I would’ve called her general and tried to persuade her to accept us and our flaws—and be proud if she was receptive to the message. If she wasn’t receptive, I would’ve called her a stupid bitch. But the new me didn’t give a fuck. I had money. Enough to buy her if I really wanted her. She was one of a million girls and my new car was more interesting, anyway.

  An hour later, after I finished the paperwork, I jumped in the driver’s seat, pumped that big-ass plate-sized gas pedal and sped off, gunning down Route 40—my Benz was equipped with navigation, heated seats, all types of lights and buttons with buttons for the buttons. I didn’t have any music so I cranked 92Q. Jay Z’s “I Just Wanna Love U (Give it 2 Me)” was on! I opened the moon roof—“I’m hustla, baby! I just want you to know!”

  REX RULES

  Re-up time came around and Nick and I were off to cop from Rex for the first time.

  Rex lived in the Northwood area of northeast Baltimore. His neighborhood was full of trees, grass, and driveways—shit we never really see. Some consider it a hood, probably because of the dense black population and Baltimore’s rep in general, but that area was a dream to kids like us. I mean, most of the families around there went to college, hung up Christmas lights, and were probably homeowners. There would probably never be a boarded-up house around here.

  When Rex opened the door, he was wearing full Muslim attire from head to ankle, that matched his black Nike boots.

  “As-salamu alaykum, come in.” His beard was long but it didn’t fully connect. Small dark frames hugged his puffy face enough to make a set of creases on the side of his temples.

  “As-salamu alaykum means hello and peace be upon to you. Every time you see your brother, you should bless him,” said Rex. Some bottles of oils were scattered around his crib, and black artwork was everywhere, from African masks to those annoying paintings they sell at flea markets of the muscled black dude riding a lion and wearing a crown with his black queen in one hand and Mother Earth in the other. He also had books that matched his artwork on the table and chair; some were cracked open with bookmarks poking out. A jump rope was on the floor by some Perfect Pushup bars—the combination of which could be united to become a hood nigga’s Bowflex.

  Rex used to be a wild pretty boy who talked about nothing but banging his gun and getting his dick sucked; now he was calm and smelled like incense.

  “Y’all young brothers ever think about converting to Islam?”

  Conversations about religion make me bored. Rex went to jail for four years and now he’s Minister Farrakhan? I didn’t get it, but Nick loved it.

  “Off my din now but I’m a get back on ahk.”

  Nick’s a jail nigga too so he slips in and out of religion. He should identify as a Christ-slum—Christian when he’s home and around his mom, Muslim when he’s locked.

  “With all due respect, fellas, I ain’t trying to explore religion. I’m down to my last li’l bit of powder and I need you, man,” I said.

  Rex asked me to stand up, saying he wanted to get a good look me. He said I wasn’t the kid he remembered. He remembered me chubby and happy—an innocent virgin on a dirt bike with clean Nikes and a mouth full of butter-crunch cookies. Love was in my eyes and my smile. Love was in my walk and followed me as I ran up and down Fayette Street. And now I was in the game—and cold like everybody else.

  “You know, Dee, you could maintain that happiness you had as a kid and survive in this game if you built a relationship with Allah.” I held in my laugh a little but some chuckles slipped out. I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t understand that I wasn’t looking to be saved, and if I was, I probably wouldn’t have a drug connect as my spiritual advisor.

  “Let’s rap about it later,” I said with respect. Disagreeing could have turned into a ten-hour conversation on Muhammad’s philosophies. I learned early not to have arguments about religion.

  Rex said he’d hold me to it and asked how many ounces did we want. I laughed again and said, “A hundred and eight ounces of your finest cane.”

  He took his small glasses off and said, “Come again now, you really want three bricks?” I took the JanSport off of my back and unzipped it enough for him to see that it was stuffed with cash.

  “Told you we was out here doing us, man.” Nick said to Rex, slowly placing the cash on the table, preparing for it to be counted.

  “Hold up, shorty, I can’t cover that today, but I’ll give you two for forty.”

  “That’s steep, and we buying two, man.” I used to look up to Rex but now I’m taller so he had to look up at me. He stroked his beard with his left hand while his right hand was tucked in his left armpit. “Okay, li’l Dee, gimme thirty-eight. That’s a great price.”

  “Rex, bro, I’ll get you thirty-five and you can sell us that other one as soon as you get it.”

  Rex agreed and went into his basement and came back with a leather ottoman. He sat it down in front of us and opened it. Some Folgers cans were inside. He pulled them out one by one until he reached the bricks. He tossed one to me and the other one to Nick.

  I nicked the plastic rectangle with my house key and put a little on the edge of my mouth. My eyes twitched as it dissolved while my tongue furled and touched the back of my mouth. “This will do!” I said. We counted that money out, paid, and bounced.

  Nick and I cruised down Ashland Avenue. I had spent a bunch of money in the last two days, and I was glad to be putting work out.

  “Why you be dismissin’ Allah and Jesus all the time?” asked Nick with a straight face. Most Baltimore people are the same when it comes to God. They do whatever they want and then use their part-time religion as a front to make them feel better when they mess up. It’s like they don’t feel bad when they commit a sin, but only when they get caught. Getting caught instantly brings the religion out.

  I pulled over and looked at Nick. “Yo, I don’t reject any God, I just don’t know. Like God wants us to be happy,
right? I’m never happy. Everybody is dying and if this God wants us so happy, then why is religion always about punishing yourself? Like no pork, no alcohol, only fucking one girl, and being nice to everybody! Man, fuck that! Heaven and hell is right here on earth and all of the hypocrite drug dealers and evangelizers like Rex are the ones who were confused!”

  DINNER AT ANGIE’S

  I clipped my half blunt and pulled my Camry up on Madeira Street. My young guns were out hollering, “Rockafella! Yeah, dat Rockafella out!” Alicia Keys was on. She made playing the piano look so cool—like what if I played the piano in Jordans with gold teeth: no one would expect that. They’d think I was coming to stick the place up and then I’d just bust out with a selection from Bach and shock everybody.

  A white man who looked liked he stepped out of a JCPenney ad walked into Angie’s place and walked out about ten minutes later, shaking his head. I saw that Angie was crying. I decided I’d fix her later.

  Block was running the shift change, and the new stuff from Rex was cranking. I stayed in the car and watched the same customers come back and back again. I wondered why they never just bought three or four. The same person would come back to our block and buy one on six or seven different occasions. I’ll literally see that they had enough for three or four and they’d be like, “Just one. I’m only doin’ one more.” Maybe it was just an illusion of self-control. Maybe I did the same with Perks, popping four half-pills in two hours, acting like that shit don’t add up.

  Troy texted, Bro you down the way? I told him yeah and come through. Troy had been getting at me heavy over the last few days about one of his patients and how I needed to meet him. He kept calling him an old head gangster and said the three of us could do business. I wasn’t really sure at what point Troy started taking a personal interest in my business, but I bet that Benz had something to do with it. I don’t think he thought I’d be rolling like that; no one really knew what I was holding. Troy was like family so I was willing to entertain any idea he had, but that car was a magnet for dick riders: everybody wanted to kick it, borrow it, be around it or in it. I got so many waves when I rode down the street, I felt like the president. I never knew owning something like that could be so exhausting.

  Troy rolled up around twenty minutes later. I was in the mix of about forty-plus loudmouth, Niked-up teens and early twenty-somethings in a huge circle. Crackhead Lenny and his wife, Loraine, were in the center wearing big red boxing gloves, getting ready to beat the shit out of each other like gladiators.

  “Left hook, Loraine! Left hook, Loraine!” some kids yelled as she belted Lenny into a three-point stance. Loraine stepped back, Ali-style, and danced a little while waiting for Lenny to gather himself. The crowd thickened, and Ike Guy and his cop friends came by to watch and made side bets like, “Lenny, you’re goin’ to jail if I lose another fifty on you!” I never gambled on junkie fights, but I’d always watch.

  “Dat nigga done! Dat nigga done!” was the usual chant when Lenny couldn’t get back up. I saw Loraine beat Lenny’s ass a thousand times.

  One time Lenny had a Rocky moment: he lunged forward with an overhand right that connected perfectly with Loraine’s chin. She swallowed the blow like a small pill and finished him off with two to the gut and a firm hook that stood him straight up before laying him out like school clothes. She then picked him up as always and gently placed him on a stoop like an infant before claiming her prize, twenty dollars’ worth of crack and some high-fives from us. They’d go back to their junkie-love right after they received the drugs. Junkie love is the realest. We all saw it before, two inseparable fiends who are always together 24/7 on a mission, always fussing but never breaking up, always connected at the hip, always sharing that last blast. Lenny and Loraine were committed to each other but married to the drug. The combination created a love that most people will never see. I was never fooled by the fights because their love was real.

  The guys on the block I hustled with lived for these fights, or dope fiend races, or drinking contests. Basically they loved a Junkie Olympics made up of anything they could bet on, and most of these events ended the same: the losers trading money for cheap shots from the winners, as we all reported back to our posts. The hustlers would go back to hustling, the police would go back to policing, and the junkies would go back to chasing.

  “Let’s rap, Dee!” said Troy as he walked up.

  I gave him a five and said, “Let me handle something real quick; walk me over Angie’s, dug.” Angie and her fat wet face was sitting on her stoop. Her muumuu was wrinkled and she rocked back and forth.

  “Angie, what’s wrong baby?” I said, patting her back.

  “So much is going on, you hungry? Lemme make you a dinner.”

  Miss Angie is the definition of power. Women like her are the most powerful people in the black community. Single mother or not—diabetes or high blood pressure or whatever ailment, black women like her remain the most consistent. They keep food on the table, they keep the lights on, they keep a roof, and still have money to spare for the church, the lottery, their kids and their kids’ kids. A lot of fathers bail. Women like Angie don’t.

  “Yo, Troy, you hungry?”

  Troy said always. We sat in the kitchen while Angie started dicing up onions.

  Miss Angie went on to tell us how she raised generations of children in this house, how her husband bought it for them when he came home from the war, how she buried him and her oldest son in that house—her fat hands were magic, she cut and whipped and seasoned; the smells intoxicated us, my stomach clenched—she could walk to church, the market, and the hospital from that house, she cooked meals for the entire neighborhood here. She lost the house after her husband died but the buyer leased it to her, and now he just tripled the rent on her and said she had to pay it or leave.

  “I can’t afford to stay! Who gonna cook for y’all when I’m gone?” She placed chicken in the oven and stared prepping sides. Tears fell and she just kept moving. Troy looked at his feet and shook his head.

  “Damn, Miss Angie. They on that gentrification bullshit around here. He just trying to tax, what he want?”

  “He said twelve hundred a month!”

  Troy yelled, “Damn.” I laughed. I couldn’t stop. They looked at me like I was crazy and I kept laughing.

  “Stay right here!” I said, running out the front door. I grabbed my bag out of the car, walked back into the kitchen and pulled out fifteen thousand dollars. Angie’s jaw hit her house slippers. Troy’s face was identical.

  “Pick your mouth up, Miss Angie!” I said, still laughing. “You do so much for us, fifteen racks ain’t shit. Pay it for a year and keep the change.” She leaped across the kitchen like Jordan and squeezed me dizzy. I lost my wind and had to pry her off of me. Troy kept saying, “That’s such as blessing, Yo.”

  Now I smelled like her house—grease, mothballs, Icy Hot, and all—but I didn’t mind. I was happy that she was happy. Troy and I inhaled her plates and walked back out front. Hurk was across the street shooting dice with Fat Tay, I hadn’t seen him in a few days.

  “Dee, you the shit man! For real, man, you a one of a kind.” Troy said, looking at me all crazy like I was a prophet or something.

  “Whateva, man, anybody in my position would’ve did that, she a nice woman.”

  “Yo, your position is exactly what I wanted to rap to you about. I’m ready to do what you do. I’m ready to sell dope, man. I want to drive that car and help people like Angie and I got a way in. This old head at my job saying he need some kids like me to move some stuff. His son got locked. He likes my personality and I wanna do this but I can’t without you. Can you stop past my job and meet him?”

  “Yo on some real shit, lemme think on it. I’ll holla at him if you want and if it’s not a good look, I’ll set you up with us. Just make sure you really wanna do this.”

  Troy thanked me a thousand times. “I love you, man,” was the last thing I heard before he pulled off.

&nb
sp; “Hurk, what’s up?” I yelled across the street.

  “I don’t know, man, you tell me?” he responded as he took two steps back, and rattled the dice in his left hand, then jumped forward and spun them across the concrete. Ohhhhhhhs erupted from the crowd.

  I grabbed the clip I had earlier and re-sparked it.

  KNOCK ’EM DOWNS

  The dope was gone and, Dog Boy and Long Tooth had moved a block over to Jefferson Street, to build a little crack spot down there. Crack spots were much easier to build than dope strips. Crack spots are like pop-up shops but established dope strips are like department stores. I headed there to give Dog Boy an eighth of cane.

  I took Block with me over to Dog Boy’s grandma’s. Dog Boy was about to cook for the first time, so I wanted to be there to coach him through it. Usually me or Nick did it for him, but he was ready to learn and I wanted to make sure he didn’t fuck the batch up. Block was older than Dog Boy but didn’t want his own strip; he was good working with me on Madeira. Dog Boy’s grandma Faye was like family. Our whole hood greeted her like, “Hey, Aunt Faye.” She really loved me, all of us, really; we could go into her fridge and everything. I walked right in without knocking.

  “Y’all li’l niggas got money now, y’all can’t be leaving the door open!” I said.

  Long Tooth nodded in agreement. He got up and started checking the rest of the doors and windows. A huge pistol rested against the small of his back.

  Diabetes chopped Faye’s foot off a year or so ago so she couldn’t get around and clean like she used to. I made Dog Boy have her house cleaned by fiends when he and his teenage friends had her crib smelling like armpits and ass. Her chairs were wrapped in plastic and she had a big bowl of fake fruit on the countertop, and a zillion fruit magnets on the fridge; so many that you couldn’t even see the door. I wish she had the same obsession with real fruit, because I never saw an edible piece in that crib.