T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E.

by Sanyika Shakur

  “Lapeace,” he answered, then added, “Is Tashima home?” A series of locks, bolts, and chains were undone before the lock on the bar door itself was opened and he was invited in. He stepped into the cool confines of the living room and was faced by a beautiful young woman wearing a Texas Rangers jersey and black biker shorts. Out from them gleamed thick muscular legs that were coated in baby oil. She wore no shoes, just white bobby socks. Her hair, like Shima’s, was a massive tangle of braids. She was short and built like Linda Murray, the bodybuilder.

  “What’s up?” she chimed, extending her unpolished nojewelried hand. “I’m Sanai, Shima’s friend.”

  “Right on, good to meet you,” said Lapeace, still captivated by her stunning beauty.

  “Sit down, bro. I’ll get Shi for you.” And she sashayed off down the hallway. Lapeace took a seat on the leather love seat under the platinum CD of the Poetess’s latest album and fiddled with his keys. When Shima came out she lit up the room with her brilliant smile and Clarion fragrance.

  “Hey, Shima. How you doing?”

  “I’m good, Lapeace, I’m good. And you? Did you speak with your attorney?” she asked him, leading him by the hand down the hall to her room.

  “Yeah, we rapped and there’s some things we need to talk about. I need you to—”

  “Shi,” interrupted Sanai, standing in the doorway wearing tennis shoes now, “I’m walking to the store. You need anything?”

  “No, I’m cool, thanks.”

  “Walkin’?” asked Lapeace, questioning the logic in that.

  “It’s right up the street,” Sanai answered pointing in the store’s direction.

  “Here, take my truck,” he insisted, while fishing in his pocket for the keys. “And can you bring me back a small box of Phillies?” he added, handing her a ten-dollar bill. Sanai looked at Shima, who in turn gave her the nod of approval. She took the keys and the money and left the room. She came back after seeing the ’burb and said, “I am not driving that truck—no.”

  “Why not?”

  “What’s wrong with it, Sanai?” added Shima.

  “It’s got D’s on it, girl. You know fools be trippin’ over them rims.”

  “I’m insured, Sanai.”

  “Aw, girl, go on up to that store and stop trippin’,” counseled Shima. Sanai thought a moment and then asked how to work the remote and left. She never knew what hit her.

  At the corner of West Boulevard and Slauson, where she stopped in the right-hand turning lane behind a red Granada, a sista tapped on the passenger-side window and mouthed a question to her. She rolled down the window and at that moment the driver’s-side door was opened and she was yanked out and shot once in the back of the head. It wasn’t until the next day that Shima and Lapeace found out. The police left a message on his service that said his truck had been found and he should come down to the impound yard to retrieve what was left of it. Shima called Sanai’s father and he told her that she’d been murdered by carjackers. Shima was stunned into a catatonic silence. “Hello?” Silence. “Hello, hello?” and finally Sanai’s father hung up. Shima was out of it totally. Lapeace laid her down and retrieved a cold towel for her head. He hit Sekou on the hip and he called right back. He gave him the generals of the situation and within thirty minutes Sekou was there in a black Lincoln rent-a-car, with two AK-47s. They slipped out the back, got into the rent-a-car, and took Slauson to Crenshaw in silence. Then at Crenshaw they turned left and stopped at 60th Street.

  “How we gonna serve ’em?” asked Sekou, signaling a left turn with his blinker.

  “With the business.” In other words, we catch all we kill. At 11th Avenue they pulled to an easy stop. Lapeace reached back and retrieved an AK, handing it to Sekou, and then the other. Checked the chamber and the clip, unlatched the safety, and got out of the car. The evening air was warm and cars were parked heavily on both sides of the street. Three things told him that it was the Rollin’ Sixties that had killed Sanai and taken his truck: the area of the jack, the fact that she was killed ’cause they knew it was his truck, and the area it was found in. Now, they’d feel the pain. With his weapon down against his left side, he jogged nonchalantly across the street and began walking on the opposite side of a gathered crowd. Sekou stayed on his side and walked toward them with his weapon behind his back. When he had gotten within a house distance he raised his AK and opened it up. He shot down every standing body he saw. The fierce bark of the AK knocked loudly, adding to its strong recoiling kick, as Sekou dumped twenty-five times, dropping half as many bodies. He retained five rounds for his retreat. Silently, Lapeace watched from across the street crouched behind a gray ’74 Pinto. Sekou got busy. When he disappeared back into the night, just as swiftly as he’d appeared, the wounded began to stir, moan, and wither. Those not hit came out of their camouflage to tend to their casualties. They were bending over their homies, walking in circles, crying, wailing, and swearing retribution when Lapeace sprinted from across the street and brought the noise again. After his thunder there was dead silence. And just as swiftly as he’d brought it, it ended and there was no more pain.

  The funeral was a closed-casket event. The impact of the bullet had blown most of Sanai’s face away. In place of her being seen, Angelus Funeral Home put together a video montage of still photographs taken throughout her life. Accompanying the photos being shown on the big screen was complementary music. “Stairway to Heaven” by the O’Jays; “Keep Your Head to the Sky” by Earth, Wind & Fire; “Angel” by Angela Winbush; “Zoom” by the Commodores; “Body and Soul” by Anita Baker; and “Your Smile” by Renee and Angela. The gathering was a solemn one, as family and friends huddled up tightly around Sanai’s casket while the spiritual council offered up its prayers for her well-being. Lapeace stood erect with Shima leaning slightly against him. He was taking a big chance by attending Sanai’s funeral. Word on the street was that detectives had been asking about him. And as of late, within the last three days, he kept receiving foreign numbers on his pager. He’d not called them back. There were unmarked cars, more than usual, combing his neighborhood (he’d been told), which added fuel to his suspicion. There’d been various agencies represented by several types of individual agents, police, inspectors, detectives, etc., etc., in the hood since they’d initiated the L.A. rebellion. When Football smashed Reginald Denny in the head with a rock and threw up the set—it seemed as if that was a call of the wild and every agency sent troops. The hood, at times, seemed to have more police in it than homies. This was compounded by the little homies’ new fascination with bank robbery, which brought yet another collection of agents snooping. The spiritual council began to wind it down and Shima’s lean became heavier. She felt personally responsible for Sanai’s death. Lapeace tried to explain to her that it was more his fault than hers. And he even thought about telling her that there was more grieving than this right now on the street, but he realized that wouldn’t help her none. He held her hand tightly.

  “And so it is,” chimed the Oba, representing Orisha, the spiritual path that Sanai and her family followed, “that our sista has passed her spirit on to another. One in whom it can carry on its meaning more fruitfully. We are thankful, however, that we were graced with its beauty in the person of sista Sanai. Let it be that she is amongst the remembered.” Neither Lapeace nor Shima attended the house gathering after the funeral.They, instead, retreated to Shima’s house, where Lapeace had been staying since Sanai’s death. He still had not told her about his own troubles. Her white 300SC Lexus came to a smooth stop in the drive and she prepared to get out when Lapeace touched her arm.

  “Babes, you can’t afford to take this so personal. You are straining your nerves. Be easy, Shima, awright?” he said pleadingly, looking her deep in her brown eyes. Her eyes were crying but no tears came out. Her lips were quivering but no sound came out. She loved this man. She knew at that moment.

  “Lapeace,” she began, sniffing back a burst of tears, “she was the closest person to me
in this world. She was all I had. Do you feel me? She was my soul mate, my alter ego, my . . .” She couldn’t hold up and for the hundredth time she burst into tears. Lapeace leaned across the console dividing them and hugged her tightly while stroking her braided hair. She smelled pure and clean and he breathed her in like smoke. “Baby,” sniffed Shima, breaking their embrace, “don’t leave me, awright? I need someone in my life with me. Don’t you go too.”

  “I’ll not leave you, Shi. I won’t go.” His heart clutched tightly and he found it hard to swallow. How was he going to explain to her the mess he was in? That he was connected to the now infamous Crenshaw massacre? Soon, he knew, there’d be his photo and bio on America’s Most Wanted. The local, regional, and world news would soon begin to pry into every aspect of his life. Shima wouldn’t be able to handle that, not now and probably not ever. He was in knots knowing that, regardless of whatever he said or however he felt, he would have to leave her in one way or another. Inside the house Shima collected her messages from her machine and Lapeace sat cutting open a blunt. The cigar paper cut easily and opened like the skin of a sausage when touched with the razor. He emptied the tobacco in the kitchen trash and began applying adhesive saliva on his return. Once seated, surrounded in the living room by gold and platinum, he started packing the cigar skin with chronic, fresh and strong. It’s aroma rose up and played with his sense of smell and for the thousandth time he wished someone would invent indo-chronic air fresheners. He rolled the blunt fat—thick as his thumb—and licked it sealed. He brought out his lighter and dried the saliva onto the paper. The blunt shrunk tightly around the chronic and Lapeace put it in his mouth and lit it up. Time to get lifted. The first inhale was always the most critical, for it set the pace for those to follow.The cough, the sometimes painful hacking, convulsive cough, was expected and welcomed—it opened up the zone for the powerful THC invasion. Lapeace blew out a light blue stream of smoke and went doubled over in spastic coughs that brought tears to his eyes. After several of these, resembling Muslim Rak’ahs, his lungs accepted the intrusion and he was beginning to feel the twist. He sat back into the comfortable leather sofa and closed his eyes. He relaxed as best he could. He’d taken off his Filas and his white tube socks looked to be glowing incandescently against the black carpet and dark furnishings. The silence was too ominous, he felt, and reached for the universal remote. He flicked on the tube and scanned the airwaves until he reached The Box. He sat through several videos. Skee-Lo, “IWish”—wack. Mystikal, “Boot Camp Clicc” —phat. MC Lyte, “Keep on Keepin’ On”—phat (and sexy as hell). Goodie Mob, “Soul Food”—phat. Geto Boys, “The World Is a Ghetto”—phat. Fat Joe—click! Off went The Box and on to BET. Donnie Simpson was sitting comfortably on the set’s couch, looking blowed out as usual, talking to Faith Evans. Damn, she’s ugly, he thought and turned the power off.

  He aimed the remote toward the stereo but it wouldn’t come to life. He took a deep drag on the blunt and hefted himself up to retrieve yet another remote atop the stereo cabinet. While at the stereo he selected a CD he wanted to hear and went back to his soft spot. He took another meaningful hit of the blunt and pushed play. “For My Lover” byTracy Chapman came smoothly across the room, touched him, and sent him up and away. It reminded him of his ex-wife and he let the sultry sound take him there, for what he didn’t know.

  Damn, she dogged me out, he thought, in her presence having rode the indo and the music there. Things were cool for a while with he and her—or so he thought. She’d given him a place to live when Aunt Pearl had driven him from the house with her paranoid alcoholic antics. They’d had their first child, a boy. Lapeace had no job then but she did. When she’d be at work, Lapeace would be puttin’ in work for his hood, his name, his propers. She seemed the perfect mate. Tall and elegant with long silky hair and a radiant smile. He smiled now to himself thinking of her beauty. But even then, she was exemplifying traits of poison. Being seen with other men in this car and that and eyeing his homies seductively. Once when he called her from across town, a male answered the phone and hung up on him. She said it was the plumber. While he was in Oakland visiting relatives, she’d had an affair with his first cousin, and when he found out about it she said he’d raped her. This caused strife and dissension in the family for a long time. His family, the little he had then, turned their back to her and tried to get Lapeace to leave her. But by then he was in love. They’d had young love, the kind seldom experienced in the midst of the urban turbulence they grew up in.They’d met in junior high school. Lapeace was a fresh-man and Tammy was a senior. She’d been one of the most popular girls in the school among her peers, but Lapeace was unaware of her. Her peers were not his—freshmen mingled with themselves, usually oblivious to most of what went on in the senior circles. The seniors looked down on the freshmen as immature, fresh-out-of-elementary schoolchildren. So, socially they seldom mingled. Lapeace, however, was an exceptional seventh-grader who came to Horace Mann Junior High with a tall bearing and a street reputation that demanded attention. Height-wise, he was as tall as any ninth-grader and almost as thick. He was accepted by them and preferred their company to his own peers. But because he was a thug, and maintained a strict code of allegiance to the M.O.B. ethic, Tammy never caught his eye.

  It wasn’t until late in the second semester that they actually met, though Tammy had long since known who he was. She’d watched him from afar, taking cats to the hoop, battling above the rim. Moving, she’d observed, like a graceful panther, with his smooth black coat glistening under the ultraviolet rays and beading sweat. His body was maturely developed from athletics with Pop Warner. His perfectly shaped chest heaved pistonlike when he halted at the top of the key. Then, bouncing the ball easily with a learned rhythm, he’d explode past his opponents, with two swift strides, and slam-dunk the ball with a ferocious roar. He’d hang on the rim, knees drawn up, stomach muscles bulging, wingspan tapering down to his thirty-inch waist, and taunt his opponents. Tammy would sit under the lunch area canopy and watch him run two or three games while she pretended to read or do homework. She’d carefully watch him gather up his T-shirt, bottled water, and Rawlings basketball and shake the others’ hands with daps, climb the chain-link fence on Cimmaron Avenue, get into his lowrider, and drive off. She figured that if she didn’t deliberately put herself in his path he’d never notice her. For it seemed to her that the popularity that garnished her meant zilch to him—if, that is, he’d ever heard of her in the first place. She knew he was a young thug, of that she was certain. Not only did his dress code reflect this but so did his associations. Tammy, nevertheless, was attracted only to roughneck types. All her previous boyfriends had been thugs in one way or another and all but one had been younger. She preferred it that way, for secretly, known, then, only to her closest girlfriend, she’d had seven abortions by the ninth grade. This produced in her a maternalism that bled over into her search for a mate and caused her to seek out young men she could mother. Because of her age and beauty the younger guys she dated usually stumbled over themselves vying for her attention. They’d go to outlandish lengths to impress her and she’d grow bored with them quickly and kick ’em to the curb. Her thing was really pursuit. She liked to do the chasing, and when she’d conquered her prey, mothered him, and gotten pregnant she’d disengage and move on.

  Lapeace was the most intriguing and elusive of her preys. He was a self-possessed young man, confident and stubbornly independent. She was nonetheless sure of her ability to capture him in her web. She just needed the opportune moment. Lapeace had two girlfriends that he’d been able to have sex with. The first was Robin, who took his virginity on a box in his Aunt Pearl’s garage. He’d never told her but feared she’d somehow known by the way he fumbled about. Which hardly equated with the way he spoke about it. His second sexual girlfriend had taught him gentleness, but it lasted too briefly. He was not hung up on sex. He could not be persuaded by it or misled into it. He’d grown up in the crack era and this produced, f
or him and his small clique, an attitude predicated on M.O.B. theory and practice. “Always,” he’d been drilled, “it’s money over bitches. Once you get the money, real women will be available, but in the thick of the grind you’ll only attract bitches trying to get your riches.” He’d grown up with this credo uppermost in his mind. So most women who’d tried to push up on him were viewed with suspicion and incredulity. It was in the wake of he and Sekou’s big hit that Tammy first approached him. He’d been standing alongside the lockers that outlined the corridor of the main building, waiting for Sekou, when she materialized out of the crowd.

  “Excuse me,” she said with a direct approach. “Can I speak with you for a minute?” Lapeace looked down at his Hamilton watch and then up again into her brown eyes.

  “Go. You’ve got fifty-five seconds,” he said coldly.

  “Come on, don’t play,” responded Tammy, flashing her ultrawhite teeth through sensuous red lips. “I need more than a minute really.”

  “Forty-five seconds.”

  “I know you ain’t trippin’ like that, are you?” she asked indignantly, overstanding that he was very serious.

  “Look,” responded Lapeace, scoping the crowd, moving to and fro in clusters, for Sekou, “if you really had something to say, you’d have asked for more than a minute. That shows how little you think of me.”

  “It ain’t that I think anything of you, it’s just that—”

  “Five, four, three, two—time’s up, I gotta go.” And he pushed up off the lockers, blended into the moving crowd, and disappeared. She couldn’t believe his nerve, his coldness, his self-righteousness. And although she stood there, books held tightly against her chest, embarrassed, she was in her own way excited by his behavior. The chase was on.

  She saw him again that day at lunch leaving the campus alone. “Hey,” she called out, giving a girlish trot to catch up to him. “Can we talk now, or what?” Lapeace looked back over his shoulder and glimpsed her thick legs rising up and falling beneath her skirt as she trotted to catch up.