Crackhead II: A Novel

by Lennox, Lisa

  “What the fuck you doing?” Shaunna said sharply, watching Laci inspect her food.

  “Looking for the mustard,” Laci said quickly. “What you think I’m doing?” She looked at Shaunna as if she should know, then hopped up and went into the kitchen to retrieve the yellow bottle of mustard in the fridge. Laci came back and squirted a nice-sized dollop of mustard in the center of her sandwich. She eagerly picked it up and bit into it. Laci hated mustard, but she wasn’t about to fall for that bullshit again.

  “So Laci,” Tonette said, cutting to the chase, digging into her bowl of cereal, “what happened to you?” She shoveled two spoonfuls into her mouth and milk trickled down her chin. “I looked all over for you. It seemed like you were a ghost.”

  Laci took a nice-sized bite out of her sandwich, chewed and swallowed it, then she drank out of her cup. “My momma was trippin’ and kicked my ass out.”

  “What?” Tonette couldn’t believe her ears. “Miss Prissy got kicked out? What the fuck you do?” She shoveled more cereal in her mouth, but this time, chased it down with Kool-Aid.

  Ignoring the “Miss Prissy” remark, Laci continued. “She accused me of stealing something.” She took another bite of her sandwich. “You know, bullshit like that,” Laci continued with her mouth full of food. She pursed her lips and rolled her eyes as if she were irritated. “Wasn’t nothing but a thing. I had to go down to Jackson. That’s where the corner store was.”

  “Stole something?” Tonette said. All of the girls looked at Laci in shock because she was true to the junkie form with theft. “You?”

  Tonette looked at Laci and noticed she didn’t have on her Movado watch, nor her diamond earrings. “Where your watch, your earrings, and shit like that?” she asked.

  “Pawnshop,” Laci told them without batting an eye. “Then I tried to get hers.” All of the girls broke out in laughter. “When the police came to—”

  “Police?” the girls exclaimed, interrupting her. “Hell naw! The po-pos came to your crib?”

  “Yeah, she called them on me, talking about she can’t control me anymore and she wanted me out of the house.” Laci mocked her mother’s tone in a sarcastic way, twisting her head back and forth, and reached for another sandwich. “Can you believe that?”

  “Damn!” the girls sang, giving each other high-fives.

  “Girl, you know you be making the shit outta Kool-Aid,” Shaunna said to Laci, drinking the rest of hers. “Re-up girl, re-up.” She held her cup out. Laci gave her a refill.

  “Monique, you want more?” Laci asked.

  “Hell yeah!” she handed her empty cup to Laci, who poured, happily.

  “She was straight buggin’,” Laci continued with her story, “so she called herself kicking me out and I just kept on steppin’.”

  “Damn, girl, I know she ain’t kick yo’ ass out just for some earrings. Come on, Laci, fess up . . . what you take that had her so pissed off?” Tonette finished her drink and poured more for herself.

  “Shit, I don’t remember,” Laci said, trying to find something good to tell her. It seemed like the girls were letting their guards down with her, but she continued to make sure. “Money, clothes, jewelry,” Laci said nonchalantly. “When it’s stuff at your crib, you ain’t stealing. It’s yours, right?” The girls nodded their approval. “But she didn’t think so.” She laughed.

  “So how she find you?” Monique questioned because when she went to Margaret’s house the first time, Laci wasn’t there, but when she went yesterday, she was.

  “Well, she looked in the best places she could in the hood and she eventually found me. It took her a while, though. When I saw her, she didn’t see me.” Laci did the bob and weave, like she was hiding from someone. All the girls cracked up.

  “How long you been back at the crib?” Tonette asked. She thought it was strange that Laci said she was in the hood, because she’d searched high and low for her there but never once did she come across her.

  “Girl, on Thursday,” she told her truthfully. “She couldn’t have me gone too long because she wouldn’t keep getting that money my daddy left her when he died. You know they cut off dependent Social Security benefits if a kid ain’t home, right?” They didn’t know because none of them knew their fathers, or even knew if they were dead or alive, but they nodded their heads.

  Tonette grinned. “I heard that, girl. So you was in the hood, huh? You still fuckin’ ’round with Dink?” Tonette was trying to find out exactly what happened with him. When Laci became a ghost, he did too.

  “Yeah girl, I was just in the hood,” Laci answered Tonette’s first question. “I wanted to come to y’all to tell y’all what was happening, but I couldn’t do that.”

  “Why?” Tonette asked. She would have loved to have seen Laci out there. On crack was one thing, but on crack and homeless? She would have killed for that.

  “Because y’all hated me,” Laci said softly with tears in her eyes as she looked among Tonette, Monique, and Shaunna. “I didn’t think I could come to y’all.” Everyone got quiet. Laci willed the tears back before she spoke again. “You know that was some fucked-up shit y’all did, because I really did consider us to be friends.”

  “And what exactly did we do, Laci?” Tonette asked, getting defensive.

  “Giving me that laced weed,” Laci told her. “That wasn’t cool.” Laci scratched her arms thinking of the memory. “What did I do to y’all anyway?”

  The air finally became thick.

  “Where should I start?” Tonette barked. “Yo’ ass was stuck up. Acting like you was better than us.” She didn’t hold back.

  “I just wish y’all would have said something about how y’all felt instead of tricking me the way you did.”

  “We did say something to you,” Tonette said, the other girls nodded in agreement. “You just didn’t listen.”

  “No, you didn’t say anything,” Laci barked. “Y’all picked on everything I said. Everything I said was wrong and y’all just turned that shit back around on me.”

  “Well you were still stuck up,” Tonette said, with her lips pursed.

  “That was not my intention,” Laci said truthfully. “I didn’t have any real friends here until I met y’all, so I guess I didn’t know how to act.”

  “What about that bougie school you went to?”

  “Girl, you really trippin’,” Laci laughed along with the girls. “Those spoiled-ass kids at my school . . . nah, I couldn’t deal wit’em. I was on the lower end of things there. Just because you have a little more or less than the average person, you would be judged. Just like y’all judged me without getting to know me.” She looked at the girls, one by one. “I wanted to go to another school, but my mother felt like she was giving me what she thought was best.” Laci reached for her cup, but it was empty by now. Monique quickly got up and refilled it and the other girls’ glasses as well. “Actually, I can’t blame her for what she did, I just wish she would have allowed me to experience life a little more. That’s why I was glad I was with y’all. You all were real and I appreciated that.”

  Laci looked around and saw that the girls were finished with their food, so she started gathering empty dishes. “Y’all, I’m really sorry if I made you feel like I thought I was better than you.” She looked at each of the girls. Laci noticed that Monique had tears in her eyes. Shaunna looked away, and Tonette made herself look busy by brushing imaginary lint off her jeans. “I know it wasn’t personal,” she told them, “and I forgive you.” She paused to give the girls the chance to say something. They didn’t.

  While Laci was in the kitchen, the girls spoke quietly among themselves.

  “You believe this shit?” Shaunna said to Tonette and Monique. “What you think is up?”

  “I don’t know,” Tonette said, watching Laci fumble around in the kitchen. “I don’t trust her.”

  Laci made her way out of the kitchen and darted off to the bathroom. She turned on the faucet to cover up any noise she might make. With t
he help of a washcloth, she pried the masking tape away from the unfinished porcelain under the toilet tank top and took all the packets of drugs that Tonette had taped there. That stupid heifa need to get more creative, Laci thought. She wrapped the stash up in the washcloth and slid it inside her purse.

  “Well, what you gonna do?” Monique asked.

  “I’ll show you,” Tonette whispered as Laci made her way out of the bathroom.

  Laci noticed that the girls were mumbling when she returned. She hoped they weren’t on to her.

  “Um, Laci,” Tonette spoke. “That shit that went down . . . it wasn’t our idea.” Tonette looked at the other girls. “Crystal came up with the idea.” Laci said nothing. She figured Crystal would have had something to do with it because she knew that Dink was feeling her, but she remembered what Uncle Sonny told her.

  “Still,” Laci said, “it was fucked up, y’all.”

  “Speaking of Crystal,” Tonette said, changing the subject, “you still hollering at Dink?” She noticed that Laci had avoided the question earlier. “We saw how he was peepin’ you, plus people saw you with him.”

  “Did them same people tell you that I was getting my shit from him? I know he was try’na hook up with me, but hell naw, I ain’t with him, I don’t want no second-hand nigga. That’s Crystal’s man. Where she at anyway?” Laci looked around.

  “Um . . . you ain’t heard?”

  “Heard what? Girl, I told you I ain’t been around.”

  “She’s dead, Laci,” Tonette told her.

  Laci eyeballed Monique, who looked uneasy. She didn’t want Laci to let on that she knew, because she was certain that Tonette would think that she’d told her more.

  “What you mean dead?”

  “Dead like in shot, six-feet-in-the-ground, ain’t-never-coming-back dead.”

  “Girl, you bullshittin’.” Laci played the game so well that even Monique had to question if she’d truly told her or not. Laci’s expression told Tonette this was the first time she’d heard of it. Laci didn’t want to ask too many questions, because she and Crystal hadn’t been all that cool.

  “Naw I ain’t,” Tonette told her seriously. “I’m a lot of things, but one thing I’m not is a liar.”

  “Damn,” Laci said. She sat down for a minute to gather her composure. “That’s really fucked up.”

  “Yeah it is,” all three girls mumbled in unison.

  “Um . . . what y’all got going on for tonight?” Laci attempted to change the subject and looked at the girls. “You wanna hang?”

  “Shit, I gotta page Smurf,” Tonette said. “Gotta tell him I’ll work wit’em.” She went to the bedroom and closed the door.

  “Damn, I must’ve ate too much,” Shaunna admitted. “Shit, I need to head home and take a nap.”

  “Yeah, I think I’m gonna crash for a bit, too. Laci. But maybe later?” Monique responded.

  “That’s cool. You girls got my number.” Laci stood up as Tonette came back into the living room. “That yo’ man or somethin’, Nette?”

  “Nah . . . but I gotta head out real quick,” Tonette said. “Maybe we can hang later?”

  “A’ight, cool.”

  Tonette walked out of the apartment. Laci said her good-byes to Shaunna and Monique, and followed behind her.

  CHAPTER 40

  AS TONETTE DROVE to the corner store, she thought about Smurf’s proposition to join his crew and realized it wasn’t such a bad idea. Ice was the newest drug to hit the street and she was sure to make a killing with it.

  She knew that ice gave a more potent and longer high than the brief high with cocaine, so she would have to push more than just ice to keep her money flowing right. What Tonette liked most was that it was odorless and undetectable, and it was more easily transportable, in penny-sized plastic bags, than crack, which she carried in the plastic vials. Pulling up at the spot, she waited.

  “Aye, yo Lil’ Rob,” Smurf called out, “go around the corner, and you should see a blue Camaro. A bitch in it,” he described. “Tell me if she’s by herself.”

  Rob did as he was told and came back within two minutes. “Yeah, she’s by herself. Whatchu fuckin’ with Tonette for?”

  “Damn, man, just be cool. Just cover me, okay?” Smurf didn’t trust her one bit, but he was gonna tame her.

  Within minutes he had pulled his car up next to hers. She got out of the Camaro and walked over to his car and climbed in.

  “Cool, so you also down for payin’ off Dame’s debt?”

  “Yeah, but I wanna make a deal with you.”

  “A deal? Girl, this ain’t no fuckin’ game show,” Smurf said, irritated.

  “No, hear me out. This will benefit everybody.”

  “Make it good,” he told her as he took his gun out of the holster and shined the chrome with his shirt.

  “What if I pay off Dame’s debt with this?” She pointed to the small v in between her legs.

  Smurf looked over at her. Her winning smile, smooth skin, and smoky eyes did something to him. Smurf felt an erection growing in his pants.

  “And what makes you think that’s gonna replace what he owed me?”

  “Because my shit is that good,” she told him seriously.

  “That was a lot of shit you got from him,” Smurf reminded her.

  “And I got a lot,” she said teasingly.

  “Is that so?” Smurf unbuckled and unzipped his pants. “Well you know I gotta test the product. Take your clothes off,” he ordered.

  Tonette didn’t object. The opportunity to fuck Smurf was what she wanted, since she’d heard of his reputation. This was also an opportunity for her to shine, because she was tired of sexing the niggas who worked for another muthafucka. Smurf was the big nigga in charge and she wasn’t going to fuck up this opportunity.

  Tonette slipped her blue and white Reebok sneakers off, then slid out of her Jordache jeans. Her black cotton bikinis covered her perfectly shaped bottom and Smurf could see the tender puff of pubic hair that was hidden by the black fabric.

  “Take your shirt off, too,” he ordered.

  She did as she was told and removed her sweatshirt. Smurf saw that her bra matched her panties. He pulled the lever to recline the passenger seat so he could have better access. Tonette attempted to lie on her back, but Smurf didn’t want that.

  “Turn over and get on your knees. I wanna hit it from the back.” Smurf reached on the side door, grabbed the small bottle of lotion he always kept there, and greased up his dick real good.

  Tonette got on all fours, arched her back, and tooted her ass up high in the air. It was something that Dame taught her and each time he hit it from the back, she would have an orgasm so strong that she’d fall asleep within minutes after it was over.

  Putting her right hand on the seat and the other hand against the door, Tonette braced herself for the big dick that Smurf was rumored to have. Actually, she wasn’t too worried about the size because Dame had also been big. She just hadn’t had none in months, and it would be a little difficult for her.

  Smurf appreciated the sight of Tonette’s perfect round bottom in front of him and he lotioned it eagerly.

  Smurf took his dick and ran it up and down the slit of her pussy. The wetness of her snatch teased the sensitive nerve endings at the head of his penis. The visual of him behind her reminded him of the tape of Dame fucking Laci. He got angry thinking about it, but it also got him turned on. In one swift motion, Smurf shoved into Tonette. She attempted to scream, but he pushed her head down into the seat to quiet the noise. He grabbed her hips and thrusted inside her again. Pulled out and pushed again, ignoring Tonette’s muffled whimpers. Smurf looked down and saw the width and length of his dick in Tonette’s tight asshole. Besides the obvious smell of sex in the air, he smelled the faint scent of blood. Guess I didn’t use enough lotion, he told himself. Smurf didn’t care, because he began to move his dick in and out of her until she moved to his rhythm.

  Tonette was pissed that Smurf fuck
ed her in her ass without saying something first. She never let Dame get it back there, but the more Smurf dug into her, the better it was starting to feel and the more aroused she became. Reaching back to remove his right hand, she felt his pistol on her waist. Tonette smiled because the rumor was true that he fucked with his piece on, so she grabbed his left hand and pulled him forward so he could grab her titties while he banged her. Smurf pulled and twisted her hard, brown nipples, which caused Tonette to moan in pleasure and pain.

  Tonette held her ass cheeks open to let Smurf watch himself drill into her under the flickering lights, and she threw it back on him like it was just a thang. He looked to his left and saw his boys across the street high-fiving each other while they watched Smurf handle his business. With a small audience, Smurf decided to go all the way and stroked her deeply, causing Tonette to thrash around wildly.

  He couldn’t hold back too much longer before he came. The vice-like grip that Tonette’s ass had on his dick was too tight and too good. Letting go of her titties, Smurf grabbed Tonette’s hips tightly and bucked one last time, filling her tight hole with his cum. Once he was done, he sat back down in his seat and fixed himself up.

  Tonette got off all fours, turned around, and sat down gingerly in the seat in an attempt to put her clothes on.

  “Don’t get that shit on my seat,” he told her, making reference to the nut that was in her ass and the blood. She was exhausted by what had just happened and didn’t want to argue with him, so she quickly pulled her panties up and put the rest of her clothes on.

  “So we’re cool?” she asked Smurf before she got out.

  “Just like you said, you’re trading in your shit for Dame’s debt, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And it’ll benefit everybody, right?”

  “Yup.” She beamed, high from the good dick she had just gotten. “We cool on the money tip too, right?” she asked.

  “Yup, we’re cool,” Smurf told her. The loss he would take on the money was worth what he was going to do with her. Little did Tonette know that Dame sold his shit on different corners. The corners now had new lieutenants, and each would have his turn collecting on his debt.