Around the Way Girls 8

by Tina Brooks McKinney

  Buddah had returned from getting them some Heinekens. He handed them each a beer.

  “We got like seven stacks right here,” Chop told him.

  Seven thousand was a decent pull, but they were used to at least fifteen a day. The raid and Spank’s absence were taking a toll on the payroll.

  “Fuck it, when Rayvon come through and get you straight, get me straight, ’cause I’m goin’ out there.”

  “Man, you ain’t going nowhere, you better stay doin’ what you do and look out,” Buddah told her.

  “Look Buddah, I gotta stack for my brother’s homecoming. I ain’t got time for shit to be fuckin’ up right now. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even be gettin’ the work. So, uhm, yeah, like I said, when it get here, give me that. Thank you.”

  “Your brother ain’t comin’ at me ’cause all of a sudden you feel like you wanna sell some coke. You know the rules, Kelly. You don’t touch the drugs.”

  That was the rule. And she never had touched the drugs. But now there was a need to touch them, therefore, it was time to break yet another rule.

  “You and Chop can’t work all that shit off. So, whas’ up, let me get my lick.”

  She wasn’t taking no for an answer, and Buddah could very well see that. Fuck it, if that’s what she wanted, who was he to stop her? She was her own woman and she was a grown woman, and he knew Kelly well enough to know that when she said she wanted something she wanted it and she was going to get it.

  There was an un-coded knock at the door. Kelly went along with Buddah, both of them strapped, to make sure there were no surprises waiting on the other side of the door. Kelly gave the okay for Buddah to open the door once she saw through the peephole that it was Rayvon. Rayvon came inside and immediately picked Kelly up and hugged her for a long time.

  “Yo, it’s been mad long since I seen you, yo,” Rayvon told her.

  “I know right.”

  They all walked toward the living room.

  “So what’s poppin’, yo? What you need?” Rayvon asked her.

  “Let him know what you need,” Kelly said, looking at Buddah.

  Buddah excused the two of them and showed Rayvon into his kitchen so that they could handle their business. Chop stayed behind with Kelly. He was waiting for Buddah to break him off his pay for the day.

  “Yo, this undercover cop came up to me the other day. I told Buddah I swear that nigga look just like you,” Kelly told Chop.

  “What the fuck you mean he look just like me. I ain’t no fucking cop!” Chop got mad instantly.

  “Yo, calm the fuck down. I never said you was a cop, all I said was—”

  “Nah, fuck that, I heard what the fuck you said.”

  Rayvon and Buddah came running into the living room when they heard the commotion. Rayvon had a 9 mm in his hand, ready to shoot Chop. No nigga was going to be talking to his man’s sister like that.

  “Ay, ay, what the fuck is goin’ on out here?” Buddah asked.

  “Yo, this nigga straight bugged out when I told him about that undercover cop that I said look just like him. Nigga actin’ like it was really him the way he flippin’.”

  Buddah looked at Chop. Chop had been working with him for three years, but still, he really didn’t know too much about him. Kelly had apparently struck a nerve. Did he have a duck on his team this whole time?

  “Yo, Buddah, man, I know you don’t believe this bitch. Man she ain’t even from around our way for real. She down wit’ them thieving-ass niggas from Brooklyn.”

  Rayvon didn’t take Chop’s comment well. He was from Brooklyn, and who was this nigga calling a bitch?

  “Yo, nigga, you need to watch ya’ mouth, before you be watchin’ ya’ mouth, you understand what I’m sayin’.” Rayvon let Chop know that he would shoot his fucking lips off and give him a clear-eye view of them.

  “Yo, dawg I don’t even know who the fuck you is, son,” Chop said.

  “You don’t need to know who the fuck I am,” Rayvon said as he pointed the 9 mm in Chop’s face.

  “Yo everybody needs to just calm down. There’s too much going on,” Kelly said.

  Kelly looked at Chop. She now saw him in a totally different light. He may have been working for the other side all along and she missed one.

  “Yo, Buddah, straight up, I ain’t fucking wit’ this nigga no more.”

  Kelly meant what she said. Chop was cut off.

  “Ay, yo, Chop let me get at you in the kitchen for a second.”

  “Nah, nigga, fuck all’at, you need to get at me right here!”

  “I’m sayin’ man, I don’t know,” Buddah started.

  “What the fuck you don’t know? You gon’ let this bitch decide who work for you? I been down wit’ you before this bitch even came on the scene. Nigga, I just brought seven stacks in this muthafucka.”

  Buddah walked over to the table and grabbed up half of the money.

  “Here.” He handed the money to Chop.

  “You stupid, man, but it’s cool . . . Just remember, you’re only as strong as your weakest link,” Chop told Buddah as he looked at Kelly.

  Kelly stared back at Chop as he walked toward the door to leave Buddah’s apartment.

  Buddah hoped that Kelly was wrong about Chop. If she wasn’t, Chop would be back. Shit if she was, Chop would be back no matter what.

  “Ay, Kelly, you gon’ be aight, ’cause you can come back to Brooklyn with me right now,” Rayvon told her.

  “Yeah, I’m good, and as long as you got my man right here straight, I’m straight,” Kelly said, referring to Buddah.

  “Oh, he straight.” Rayvon confirmed.

  “Cool, then I’m straight,” Kelly told him with a smile.

  “A’ight, well, I got some other shit I gotta handle so I’m out.” Rayvon left her there with Buddah, but he planned to come back. He told that nigga to stop calling Kelly a bitch, but he wouldn’t listen.

  “We gotta get all of this shit off now.” Buddah told her. “Chop put in work.”

  “Fuck Chop. Let me get that.” Kelly held out her hand for her package.

  She walked out of Buddah’s apartment. She didn’t have time to be playing with these niggas; she had some money to make.

  Three hours had passed and Kelly was halfway done. One package down and one more to go and she would have the seven thousand that Chop had thrown on the table. She was trying to figure out a way to cut her time in half and make double the money. Kelly was on the block going hand to hand. She didn’t have a choice, since she had made Buddah get rid of Chop,

  “Kelly!”

  Dante jumped out of his patrol car. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He knew she was a lookout, but he had no idea that she was now selling drugs. There was no way she was going to be able to become a police officer if she kept behaving in such a destructive manner.

  Kelly saw Dante and rolled her eyes. Damn, she thought, as she sucked her teeth.

  “You know we’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he told her.

  “No shit! Dante, what are you doing around here?”

  “I’m doing my job. They gave me this area today. What the hell are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing, Dante?”

  “Honestly, Kelly, I can’t even believe what you’re doing. I can arrest you.”

  “But you won’t,” she said, almost daring him to.

  “Get in the car,” he yelled.

  Dante grabbed Kelly tightly by her arm, shoved her into the backseat of his patrol car, and slammed the door. He then got in the driver’s seat and slammed his door even harder before he drove off. Quite a few people in the hood heard and saw what had transpired between Kelly and Dante. The whole neighborhood was buzzing with rumors. They didn’t know if Kelly was getting locked up, but they saw her leave in the clutches of a cop.

  “What the hell are you trying to do, Kelly, ruin your life?” Dante asked her angrily as he watched her through his rearview mirror.

  “You don�
��t know anything about me or my life.”

  “I know a lot more than you think I know.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. Stop all of this, Kelly, before it stops you.”

  Dante had driven quite a distance away from where he had seen her selling drugs. He pulled over and got into the backseat along with her.

  “Kelly, there is no way you will be able to become a police officer if you keep trying to get arrested.”

  “Why the hell do you keep talking about that shit? Who the hell said I want to be a police officer? That’s your wish for me, Dante, not mine. That’s the last thing I want to be.”

  “You haven’t allowed your mind to grasp the thought, Kelly. You have the skills. You’ve got exactly what it takes to make a great police officer. You’re just wasting your keen senses and gut instincts on bullshit street deals. You could do good work by using those same skills and help rid the hoods of the people that are killing them.”

  “People like me, Dante?”

  “You’re not one of them, Kelly. You just think you are, just like when I was out there wilin’. I thought I was a gangster. I thought I was a Blood.”

  “I can’t be no cop, Dante. Everything I’ve been taught and everything that I believe in goes against what you stand for,” Kelly said sincerely.

  “That’s only because you won’t allow your mindset to change. You have to change your mindset, Kelly. Start believing in yourself, that you can do good.”

  Kelly thought about what Dante was saying to her. Why did he make sense to her? She wanted to find every reason not to agree with him.

  “Y’all don’t even make a lot of money.”

  “That’s not true, Kelly. Shit, we make a very decent living. You see how I live. You don’t see me hurting for anything.”

  Yeah, the nigga did have the Jag and Cadillac truck in his driveway, hmm, shit, she thought.

  He could see her opening up to the idea.

  “I have medical coverage. Does your current position give you that? Especially with what they have you out there doing. I mean, you say they care about you, right?”

  “Whatever, Dante.”

  Kelly looked at him and smiled. She couldn’t help it. He made her smile.

  “What about my weed smoking?”

  “Well, that’s easy, you’re going to have to quit.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  Kelly wanted to forget about trying to be a police officer right then and there. There was no way she was going to be able to stop smoking weed. She didn’t even want to.

  “Kelly, are you addicted to marijuana?”

  Fuck marijuana—this is purple cush; this ain’t no regular shit, Kelly thought.

  Kelly knew she was addicted to weed, but she never had to admit it. Now that she had, it didn’t sound good.

  Kelly didn’t like needing anything. She was now determined to get the cush out of her system and try a different way of life. She wanted to at least give herself a chance. She owed it to herself, and she owed it to her mother.

  “All right,” she reluctantly agreed.

  “All right, what?” Dante wanted her to make the decision to change her life. He couldn’t make her.

  “All right, I’ll stop smoking.”

  “And . . .”

  “And, what?” Kelly asked. But she knew what he was waiting to hear.

  “And I’ll think seriously about being a police officer.” Wow. I can’t believe I just said that shit, she thought.

  Chapter 7

  What’s Done In the Dark Must Come to Light

  The television was so loud Kelly didn’t hear the thunderous knock on her apartment door, but after the kicking started she couldn’t help but hear the noise. Whoever was at the door was going to get cursed out. Kelly was watching her favorite show, The Game, and Tasha Mack was about to try to get Rick Fox back. She turned the volume down on her 40-inch plasma and threw the remote back onto the large pillow of her gray suede sofa.

  “Who is it?” she yelled, grabbing her .380.

  “It’s me, Dora.”

  “Dora, I don’t have time for your bullshit right now,” Kelly yelled as she put her .380 back into its hiding place near her front door.

  Kelly ran back to her television to see what she had missed when Dora went at her door again.

  “This bitch,” Kelly said in frustration. She was missing her show and she was pissed off.

  Kelly ran back to her door and unlocked it and quickly ran back to her television. She allowed Dora’s trifling ass to come into her apartment, that’s how much she wanted to see her favorite television show.

  “What the hell do you want, Dora?” Kelly asked her, looking back and forth between Dora and her TV screen.

  “I just want you to know that because of your bitchin’ snitchin’ ass, Buddah got locked the fuck up,” Dora yelled.

  “What? What the fuck you mean, Buddah got locked up?” Kelly asked in disbelief.

  She had just spoken to Buddah the night before and everything was all good. He told her that he was shutting shit down early again and that he was going to need his car because his truck was in the shop. She dropped his car and his keys off to him at his crib, got another two packages, and dipped. That was the last she had seen or heard from him. Kelly didn’t know what the fuck was going on, but she knew if Buddah panicked and experienced a case of loose lips, her ship was going to be sinking soon. She had hoped that Kevin’s rep held enough weight with Buddah for him to keep his mouth shut about her involvement in his drug operation.

  “What the fuck you gon’ do now, bitch?” Dora said, spitting while she spoke.

  “Yo, Dora, get the fuck out my crib with that bullshit, yo,” Kelly told her.

  Dora wouldn’t leave Kelly’s apartment. She was drunk and she was high and she had apparently been crying. Dora kept ranting and raving about Buddah and Kelly fucking around behind her back. She told Kelly that she knew that she and Buddah were having a sexual relationship.

  “Bitch, you was fuckin’ him. I know you been fuckin’ him now get him outta jail, bitch, or give me the goddamn money so I can go an’ get my dick outta jail, you stinkin’ ho bitch,” Dora cried in a drunken rage.

  Kelly walked briskly over to one of her stash spots near the front door and grabbed her .380. She walked back over to where Dora stood and pointed the gun directly at her and cocked it. Kelly didn’t care about Buddah being locked up at the moment, this bitch was in her apartment bugging the fuck out and that’s exactly where she could die, right there in her apartment. Kelly really didn’t give a fuck.

  “Ga’ head an’ shoot me! Shoot me, bitch! I got people that know I was coming right on over here. So ga’ head bitch, cause yo’ ass’ll be locked up too,” Dora screamed.

  All Kelly could think of was Dante asking her was she stupid enough to do a crime with known witnesses that could rat her out. As Kelly stood with the gun in her hand, she reflected on the craziness of her actions. She knew that her mother would turn over in her grave if she was there to see what it was that Kelly was doing and who she had become. She took the clip out of her gun and put it in the jacket pocket of her red velour jogging suit and calmly sat the gun down on her living room table and sat herself down on her sofa. She needed to think and she needed to think rationally.

  “Dora, look, I don’t know what the fuck happened to Buddah, but I’ma find the fuck out. Now what I need you to do is get the fuck out of my crib, yo,” Kelly said calmly as she looked up at Dora’s sweaty face. It was obvious that Dora’s intrusion to come and inform Kelly of the current events was a result of one of her many crack-smoking intermissions.

  Kelly was so calm that Dora knew that she needed to get her ass out of the apartment, because if the clip went back into that gun for any reason, the outcome was not going to be good. Dora couldn’t help herself; she was leaving, but not without having the last word.

  “You better find out, and you’d better l
et me know too, bitch,” Dora said angrily, slamming the door as she exited.

  Kelly had to get her mind right. Dora had just knocked her off of her own high. She went and got her weed from her bedroom, came back and sat in front of her television, hoping that BET was doing a marathon of The Game, but when she saw Bernie Mac’s black ass complaining about his nieces and nephew, she realized she was going to have no such luck. Kelly sucked her teeth and let out a huge sigh. That bitch had made her miss The Game. Kelly took a Dutch out the five-pack box of vanilla Dutch Masters, removed the plastic wrapping, and inserted the cigar into her mouth and rolled it around in her mouth to lubricate it. She continued to roll her blunt as she contemplated who to contact about what had really happened to Buddah. She had to be careful. Until she knew what went down, she didn’t know who she should even be talking to.

  Shit, Dora could have been making the whole thing up with her high ass, Kelly thought.

  As Kelly scrolled through the contact list on her phone, another knock came on her apartment door. She had finished rolling her blunt and was just about to set fire to it. She put the blunt away and she also put the clip back into her .380 and put her .380 back in its secret place.

  “Bitch, I done already told you to take yo’ junkie ass home,” Kelly yelled. That was it, she was ready to drag Dora’s ass back inside of her apartment and beat her ass to a bloody pulp. She didn’t care who knew. Kelly opened her apartment door ready to go to work on Dora’s drunken ass, but it wasn’t Dora this time.

  Laquisha stood in the doorway looking at Kelly’s twisted face. She could tell that she was heated and ready to do some damage. Kelly immediately stepped to the side for Laquisha to come inside. She was hoping that she had heard something on the block about what happened to Buddah. Colonial Heights was worse than a Facebook bulletin. If one person knew what happened, the whole hood would soon know what happened. But Kelly needed the uncut version, and if anyone in the hood had the uncut version of what went down with Buddah, it was Laquisha.