by Wahida Clark
“Whut up?” Lil’ Rick said. “My cuz tole me about Tink. Is he okay?”
“Yeah, got hit wit some birdshot.”
“Damn. Any idea who did it?”
“Nah,” he lied.
“Well… keep this on the low. But if you need a nigga, I’ll be ova Candy’s crib. Get at me, dawg.”
Polo hung up. “Bizzy.”
“Yo.”
“That was Lil’ Rick. Look, I’ma keep what you told me to myself and you do the same about what went down at Kaseem’s crib.”
Bizzy crossed his heart then kissed his finger. “Dat’s a bet, my nigga. I’m not havin’ no D’s question me about nothin’.” In truth, it was his fear of Lil’ Rick. The deal of silence was sealed.
Five weeks later
Lil’ Rick was now back in Raleigh pimping hard in his new sunburst orange Hummer H2 rolling on twenty-eight-inch DUB rims. With Kaseem dead and his team broken up, he had no fear of anyone retaliating for his lick on Datwon. Even Datwon had packed up and left with his girl. Shit, he was happy to be alive.
Tink was home now. He could walk, but no running, nor could he lie on his back. The good news was that Trina was now four and a half weeks pregnant with his second seed. Tink also had a job. He worked at a kiosk selling black-authored novels for Vic Mar Publications. It was legal and positive and Trina was proud of her man.
As for Bizzy, he got tired of stressing about Lil’ Rick finding out about his deal with Mance, so he packed up and moved to South Carolina with his uncle.
Polo was still going back and forth to court for his gun charge—well, he only went twice but it was two times too many. Today he was waiting at his lawyer’s office to speak to his lawyer. He nodded at the new white legal assistant who had Desiree’s old office. Polo had been at Trina’s crib watching the news when the story had broken about the three dead bodies at Kaseem’s crib. He knew Desiree was okay when the reporter stated her condition but didn’t mention her name. He would never forget that November night.
“Tyrone Bell,” an unfamiliar voice called his name. He looked toward the door to see a fine shapely brown-skinned woman wearing winter apparel by Baby Phat from shoulder to feet. The woman walked toward him in her fur-lined boots and held out her gloved hand. Polo came to his feet.
“My name is Jelena,” she said.
“How you know my government name?” he asked after shaking her hand.
“You mean the one your mother gave you?” She smiled. Seeing that Polo didn’t return her smile she got serious. First, she thanked him for sending Desiree flowers when she was in the hospital. Polo lied and said it wasn’t him. She waved him off. She explained in a whisper that Desiree hadn’t mentioned his name to the police and that she now wanted to thank him for saving her life. Polo knew it was pointless to lie after Jelena had told him that she was Desiree’s best friend and roommate.
“How is Desiree doing?”
“Fine. Just minor burns on her lower legs and back. She’s a fighter.”
“That’s good.”
“She was right about you.” She smiled as she looked him up and down.
“About what?”
“Said you looked like Michael Vick.” She then looked him in his eyes. “Polo, do you have a girlfriend?”
“No… nobody to stress me if I don’t call or stay out. Why?”
“Like I said. My girl wants to thank you and I know she likes you and I’m just looking out for my girl.” She then asked him to follow her outside. There was a light snowfall but Jelena was traveling in a well-equipped tan gold Lexus LX 470. Sitting in the passenger seat was Desiree, wearing a black mink coat and YSL shades. He got into the back as Jelena got behind the wheel. There was an odd moment at first until Desiree broke the silence. She turned slowly in her seat to look at Polo. She removed her shades and said thank you. Polo said it was no big deal. But it was a major deal to her. He had killed a man to protect her. She then asked if he wanted to go out to dinner later on that night if he was free. He accepted her offer.
It was nine months later when Polo gave Desiree his last name. He was now a married man with a legal job and everything was all good.
THE “P” IS
FREE…
BY LASHONDA TEAGUE
ONE
The pussy is freeee but the crack cost money! Oh yeaaah!
Knowledge reigned supreme from the boom of Wiz’s brand-new gold Volkswagen Jetta. It was kitted bumper to bumper and cruised the streets of Newark on gold BBS rims.
It was 1986 and Wiz was on top of the world, because the new game in the streets was making young nigguhs rich, damn near overnight. It was called crack or flavors, depending upon the vial cap color, and it was quickly becoming the answer to all the ghetto’s problems. Poverty, abuse, despair, you name it, crack was the shoulder we collectively cried on. But for nigguhs like Wiz, eighteen and hungry, the only addiction to the drug was the money it made, which created its own high. Not even a year ago, Wiz was a tackhead dropout, stealing cars and robbing cats for sheepskins. Now he had a sheepskin in every color, with Ballys to match, a solid gold dookie rope with the dangling anchor medallion and a four-finger ring that read WIZ KID in looping gold letters.
He drove through the streets bumping KRS-One with the windows down to let the spring air in. Every light he stopped at, his system turned heads. Nigguhs scowled and frowned, while women frowned upside down, from ear to ear.
It was his system and kitted Jetta that got their attention, but his looks kept it. Wiz never had a problem scooping females. He had a peanut-butter-brown complexion, chinky hazel eyes that shimmered behind his gold CAZAL frames and dimples that winked from his cheeks when he smiled. Wiz was skinny, but his bowlegs made the shorties melt when he walked.
Wiz definitely had his share of chicks, but none could claim his name because he was engaged to the streets with a summer wedding fast approaching. He had two crack houses, one on Goldsmith Avenue, the other on Chadwick, and was looking to open a third. Each spot brought in a grand on a bad day and Wiz stayed on top of his B.I., milking it for all it was worth. He pulled up to his spot on Chadwick, checking his beeper for the fifth time in as many minutes.
“Damn, this bitch on my dick.” He sucked his teeth, faking annoyance that his pipe game kept the chicks sweatin’ him.
He looked up, then got out of the car, and all he heard was:
“Yo, Wiz!”
“Baby, talk to Moe. I ain’t got but eight dollars.”
“Yo, Wiz! You still want them sneakers?”
“Wiz, I need to see you!”
The block seemed to be infested with shabbily dressed zombies, moving to and fro, trying to feel that blast. He was annoyed at the way the feens were all over, making the spot hot. He had told Moe about keeping order, so he was vexed that his word wasn’t being followed.
“Get the fuck out of my face,” he hissed at the woman with eight dollars as he pushed past her and took the front steps of the two-family house two at a time. He had rented the basement and second floor from the old man who lived on the first. The old man was cool and didn’t ask questions, because he was well paid for his silence.
“Yo, Moe! Moe! Open the fuckin’ door!” Wiz yelled, ringing the doorbell repeatedly. A few moments later black Moe, the fortyish coon he had running the spot, opened the door.
“Oh what up, Wiz? I ain’t know—” Wiz brushed past him and entered the foyer, slamming the door behind him.
“Yo, Moe, how many times I have to tell you to keep the fuckin’ feens in line? You makin’ the whole block hot!”
“Man, nigguhs and flies, Wiz, nigguhs and flies,” Moe quipped with an irreverent wave of his hand.
“What?” Wiz sniped, because he was in no mood for Moe’s coon talk.
“Nigguhs and flies I do despise, but the more I see nigguhs, the more I love flies.” Moe chuckled and, despite his ire, Wiz did too. “Them mutherfuckas feenin’, Wiz. I been out over an hour. Hell, I been beepin’ you like crazy.”<
br />
“Yeah, yo, I had to bag the shit up,” Wiz told him, as he pulled a large Ziploc bag from the elastic of his Fila suit. The Ziploc was stuffed with small orange-topped vials rubber-banded together in groups of ten. He handed it to Moe. “That’s thirty clips. I’ll be back through tomorrow.”
Moe turned the bag over in his hand. “Shit, you coulda saved time and just brought me the shit to bottle up.”
Wiz adjusted his slight sag, freeing his boxers from the uncomfortable bind the Ziploc had put them in. He didn’t respond because the truth was that Moe was in question. Moe was a grand hustler, but every time he let Moe bag the weight, it always came up short. So Wiz had started doin’ it himself.
“Yo, I’m ghost, Moe. Beep me if you need something else before tomorrow.”
Wiz stepped out on the porch. The feens seemed to sense the presence of their crystallized savior, because they had stopped wandering up and down the block. Now they all were basically in a line, eyes glued to Wiz standing in the door. A wave of remorse momentarily seized Wiz’s emotions, seeing the intense expression of anticipation on the ashen black faces. Their eyes bloodshot, lips cracked, bodies shriveled, a total disregard for themselves as human beings. He looked into the faces of the women: many were still pretty. Young, old, it was all the same and it made him think of his mother. Even though she smoked, she still worked and Wiz vowed he’d never let her end up out here. “Nigguhs and flies,” he mumbled to himself as he headed to his car.
* * *
“I raised you better than this, Crystal! Look what you’re doing to yourself! I refuse to watch you destroy your future… yourself! Not in my house, not in my house! Now, you either give me that mess or you and it can get out in the streets where it belongs!”
Her mother’s words echoed in Crystal’s soul, even though they had been spoken over a month ago. She just couldn’t get them out of her head, and even though she knew her mother was right, she couldn’t get crack out of her system. It was slowly consuming her, becoming the god she worshipped and the religion she devoutly practiced. Every step she took toward the crack house made her heart race faster and her self-respect drop lower.
Crystal had questioned herself many times about how she had reached this point in her life. She had good parents, a good home and two years put in at Rutgers University, but she had let it all go at a club party on Chancellor six months ago.
Flashing lights… movin’ to the beat
The blue light blazed and sweaty black hormones grinded to the sounds of Secret Weapon, and Crystal was having the time of her life. She loved to dance, to be in a crowd of dancing people, passing joints and drinking Pink Champale. Her head was buzzing and her man of choice was fine enough to really make her express her rhythm. So when her girl Tricia showed her the slim glass cylinder, eyes glazed and shaky-handed, she didn’t skip a beat.
“What’s this?” Crystal yelled over the groove, as she took the pipe in her hand.
“Th-th-that’s that shit,” Tricia replied through her numbed senses. “And these nigguhs got plenty of it!” She gestured toward the cat whose party it was. A face Crystal didn’t know, but you would know as belonging to Wiz.
Crystal looked at the rocklike substance stuffed in one end of the pipe, curiously, as the party continued around her.
Is it all over my face? Hell yeah! Cause
I’m in love dancin’!
She had sniffed coke before, and it really didn’t faze her, so what she had in her hands didn’t send off any warning signals about what she was doing. She put the pipe to her lips and the lighter to the opposite tip, illumining her blue-lighted skin with an ominous orange hue. The rock sizzled and snapped its way into smoke, curling and filling the pipe, tumbling toward her inhalation, and when it reached her… it spoke. Crystal… welcome home, baby, welcome home… feel that? Yeah, you feel that… you know what that is?… me… don’t I tingle?… tingle like a thousand kisses… let me in, Crystal, I promise (it snickered) I’ll be gooood to you. Because I know… know. What you need, Crystal. I know your secrets. About the abortion no one else knows about. That you’re afraid to be ridiculed for, shamed for. I don’t judge you, I agree. You don’t need a baby… all you need… is me.
I’m caught up! In a one-night love affair…
Crystal’s downfall was her sense of motivation. When she wanted something, she didn’t rest until she got it. When she wanted to run track, she didn’t rest until she brought home all-city. When she wanted to go to college, she didn’t rest until her SATs stood out. So now that she wanted to get high, she couldn’t rest until she stayed that way.
Crystal had basically been homeless since her mother put her out. She slept in crack dens or crackhead’s apartments on the rare occasion that she did rest. Her days were filled with chasing the pipe, boosting clothes and selling her body if all else failed. Nothing and no one would stop her from that blast. Not the streets, not her momma and definitely not the fool ganking at her in a gold-kitted Jetta.
She wasn’t what Wiz’s standards considered a fly girl. She was cute, no doubt, real cute. Her caramel complexion and doe-shaped eyes gave her face a sensual innocence that Wiz admired. Her shape wasn’t ghetto thick but her firm breasts stood out against her T-shirt, tantalizing his gaze. It wasn’t her gear either, because she was dressed average: T-shirt, windbreaker and sweatpants, along with a pair of electric blue 54.11 aerobic Reeboks. It was her style, the way she carried herself, head up, like a woman with a purpose, a direction. He had no idea which direction she was headed in.
He turned the corner and drove down Goldsmith to his crack spot. On this side of town the feens were less conspicuous, but no less plentiful. He watched his team of little nigguhs, Lil Mike, Nu-Nu and Pills, handle the customers one after the other. He ran Goldsmith differently from Chadwick. Here the house only served as a stash spot, while his team played the block. Pills held the money, Nu-Nu held the work and Lil Mike held the heat.
Wiz parked his car in the middle of the street, because Goldsmith was divided by a concrete partition that doubled as a parking lane. When he got out, his young team gathered around him.
“What up, homeslice?” Pills, the youngest at fourteen, greeted him while lighting a cigarette. “When you gonna let me push the whip?”
Wiz chuckled. “Mutherfucka, when you buy it.”
Pills pulled out four large stacks of money, rubber-banded together. “Shit, I got the money right here.”
Wiz took the money and put it in his glove compartment. “Yeah, you got my money right here.” Wiz checked his watch. “And didn’t I tell y’all to watch for truancy during school hours? They see y’all and come runnin’ up in my shit. Y’all wanna drop out in kindergarten, so what, just don’t get me fucked up too.”
“Man, I’m in the eighth grade,” Nu-Nu, fifteen, stated factually.
“S’posed to be in the tenth grade. Y’all don’t never go to school,” Lil Mike, fifteen, scolded them. He was the only one who did attend occasionally, even if it was only to show off his money, gear and jewelry.
Nu-Nu pulled out a modest knot of his own. “Man, this my school right here, and I’m at the top of my grade!” Nu-Nu and Lil Mike dapped each other and Wiz smiled proudly.
Of course they should be in school, but so should he, so what could he really say? At least they weren’t running around hungry and dirty, or worse, high.
“Yo, yo, Pills. Here she go!” Lil Mike whispered excitedly. They all turned their attention to the corner and watched Crystal turn the corner and head straight for them.
“Yo, yo, if she ain’t got enough, tell her to see me. If she let me fuck her, I’ll put up her high,” Mike said lustfully. He and his crew had already learned the power crack gave them over women two and three times their age and what they would do for the drug. They all wanted Crystal, but none had managed to hit.
“Y’all some young freaks,” Wiz accused, eyes still on Crystal. For some reason he didn’t understand, he was disappointed that sh
e was a smoker.
“Yo, Nu-Nu, come here,” Crystal called. She stopped a few houses away with her hands in her windbreaker pockets, doing the crackhead shuffle.
“Yo, money, she smokin’ that?” Wiz asked Lil Mike and Pills as Nu-Nu went to serve her.
“A hundred miles an hour,” Pills confirmed, still fantasizing about the day she’d fall into his power. They always did.
Wiz shook his head, analyzing her up and down. He could see she couldn’t be much older than him, pretty, and she had business about herself. How the hell did she get caught up? He wondered what made seemingly sensible people smoke after seeing the damage it could do.
As she turned to walk away, her profile sparked a vague familiarity in his mind, and before he knew it, he called out, “Ay yo, shorty! Hold up!”
Wiz bopped over to her, hearing Pills remark, “I git seconds, Wiz.” He ignored the comment as he approached her. Crystal’s mind was too preoccupied with the plastic in her palm for her to notice anything about Wiz, except for the fact he was holding her up, and only natural curiosity made her want to know why.
“Excuse me, but… where do I know you from?” Wiz asked sincerely, but to Crystal’s ears it sounded like a hoochie “can I kick it” line, and a weak one at that.
She quickly dismissed him like, no, and walked away, leaving Wiz like a piece of brushed-off lint.