Keyshia and Clyde

by Treasure E. Blue

  Even though Aunt Ninny was just as dark as, if not darker than, Keyshia, she hated Keyshia’s Negroid composition with a passion. Aunt Ninny was in her late thirties and did everything in her power to separate herself from her country Negro persona. She forced the country southern accent that she had out of existence and had Keyshia straighten her hair every single night with the hot comb before getting her hair relaxed with chemicals that burned holes in her scalp. She used skin-bleaching cream without fail until her skin pigmentation turned her a ghastly faded color. She even went so far as to pick her male impregnators by design. Only the lightest of light black men with soft straight or curly hair were worthy to mate with her in order to spare her children from a lifetime of ridicule, mockery, and persecution. And she adored her two boys because of their physical attributes.

  Aunt Ninny made good on her promise over the years and made Keyshia a virtual slave. Keyshia did the bulk of the cooking, cleaning, and washing in the household. Her two cousins made it known to Keyshia that she wasn’t shit. They would purposely fuck up the house and make her clean it. Once, one of the brothers ordered, “Hey, black bitch, come clean this leak up on the floor.”

  Keyshia came with the mop and asked, “Where is the leak?” Her cousins smiled and pulled out their penises and peed right there on the floor in front of her. Keyshia couldn’t stand their arrogant little asses.

  The early years at her aunt’s were the worst because she was always lonely, scared, and nervous. But she grew to accept her position in life. Over the years, she learned how to hurt and manipulate them all, including her dreaded auntie. If things got too hectic around the house or the beatings became too much, she would fake sickness, as if she were about to die. Because Keyshia’s body was riddled with whip marks and iron burns and appeared malnourished, her aunt dreaded taking her to the hospital—she feared her abuse of her niece would be exposed. Besides, over the years she developed a dependency on Keyshia and at that point couldn’t function without her. In a matter of days following Keyshia’s “illness,” the whole house would turn upside down. The apartment would be a wreck, and the boys would complain that they were starving. In no time at all, they would take care of her by bringing her chicken noodle soup and waiting on her hand and foot as she recovered from the mysterious illness that had her bedridden. These were the moments Keyshia really enjoyed. The only other times she was happy was when she was alone and could watch television or put on DVDs and watch movies for hours on end. Her favorite movie was The Color Purple because she felt exactly like Celie, the character played by Whoopi Goldberg. Keyshia cried each and every time she saw the movie. She felt Celie’s pain, her hardship, and her quest for freedom. Keyshia also felt she was ugly, helpless, and torn from her family down south and that nobody from there would come rescue her. She also loved the movie Set It Off, which starred Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, and Vivica A. Fox. She loved the way the girls took control of their lives and went all out to get what they wanted by force. Keyshia would act and repeat everything the girls said while she watched them. I could never be so confident, she thought. Keyshia would get so caught up, so lost in the movie, that she would forget where she was at times. Whenever she acted out their parts, she spoke almost properly and just like the characters on-screen.

  Chapter 2

  _______________

  Clyde’s Beginnings

  “Yo, what the fuck is this nigga’s problem?” shouted the boy as he and his friend watched a bicycle skid to a stop. The two boys, Jeff and Dino, were drinking forties and macking to two young girls when Clyde whizzed by, just missing their sparkling jet-black Honda Accord by inches. The teens ran over to inspect their vehicle and then, satisfied that no damage was done, they turned their attention to Clyde.

  “Yo, nigga,” shouted Jeff, “if you would’ve hit my car, I would’ve hit that ass.”

  Clyde showed no emotion as he got off his bike and stared at them.

  Emboldened by Clyde’s lack of response and wanting to show off for the girls, Dino jumped in front of Clyde and said, “Yeah, that’s right, nigga, fuck around if you want to. You get that ass fucked up out here—” And he put his hand in his pocket like he was strapped with a weapon and was ready for him. Clyde looked him square in the eyes, then walked around him to go inside Johnny’s to drop off his money from the delivery.

  Johnny’s Ice House on 118th Street between Manhattan and Eighth avenues delivered ice to various businesses in the neighborhood and sold bags of hot peanuts and the coldest sodas in Harlem. Johnson Gadson had been there for years, and everybody knew Johnny, or “Pops,” as some called him, because of his genial personality. His colorful and animated stories would have people laughing for hours on end. The police department at the Twenty-eighth Precinct even made him an honorary member, which basically meant nobody was to fuck with him. Pops watched nearly everyone in the neighborhood grow from Pampers to adulthood, including many of the young boys who became gangsters, killers, and, sadly, dope fiends. Hell, he usually gave these boys—many of whom were poor, general hardheads, and misfits—their first job. Most of them didn’t last a day. The job was hard work with meager pay, and boys didn’t want to be laughed at for riding those boxy old three-wheeled bikes.

  Most Harlem teens would never be caught dead working for Pops when they could sell dope and make a hundred times as much just by serving as lookout. Only the really desperate worked for Johnny’s Ice House—like Clyde Barker, seventeen years old, who lived right around the corner on 117th and Manhattan.

  Clyde looked like a darker version of Tyson Beckford and was thin in build, but his powerful arms and chest were chiseled like a superhero’s. When he lifted the heavy blocks of ice to put on his bicycle, his veins would pop out and highlight his strength. Clyde was a strange individual. He’d worked for Johnny’s Ice House for nearly four years, since he was thirteen years old, and he could care less about how people in the neighborhood regarded him. He didn’t do the things that normal teens did, such as play basketball, hang out on the avenue, or get into drama. He was reserved and kept to himself. The other kids didn’t know what to make of Clyde, so they stood clear and didn’t test him. Well, some didn’t test him.

  Pops watched the entire exchange with Jeff and Dino go down from the window inside the store and was impressed, once again, by the measured wisdom and control Clyde had for his age. He would listen to Pops talk for hours on end about life. Clyde had a close bond with the older man because he never had a mentor in his life who didn’t want anything from him but his well-being.

  “You handled yourself good out there, Rocco,” said Pops as he accepted the delivery money from Clyde, calling him by the nickname he’d given him.

  Clyde only nodded.

  “You know, young fuckers like them out there is stupid. They make gestures like they some big-time gangsters, when all they doing is tryna impress them young gals out there,” Pops said as he chomped down on his dollar cigar while staring with disgust out the window. “If you remember one thing, you remember this—” Clyde jumped on one of the soda boxes and waited for Pops to drop him a jewel. “See, Rocco, the most valuable thing you can learn in life is learning people.” Pops nodded, agreeing with his own words. “Once you’ve mastered the art of people’s characteristics, it’s like you can read anybody’s mind.” He stared at Clyde with his deep, dark eyes to ensure that he had got the point. “And you want to know what’s the biggest giveaway?” he asked. “Their body language.” Pops nodded at his revelation. “Anything you want to know about anybody, just look in their eyes, look at how they walk, how they gesture, how their body and eyes respond after you challenge ’em. Shit, I seen more niggas out here talk a good game. Yelling like a gorilla, cussin’ and rantin’ what they gonna do. And when a real man takes ’em up on their challenge, they shit their pants and start apologizing.” Pops stared at the two boys and frowned. “And I tell you right now, them two bastards out there would need diapers if they fucked with a real man. That
’s fo’ sho’.”

  Clyde jumped off the soda case, exited the store, and stared at the two boys as they told the two girls where to meet them for a date that night. Clyde never wore his emotions on his sleeve. He never allowed anyone to know what he was thinking.

  When Clyde got home from work, he listened at the door before he entered. This was his usual routine. He wanted to know what kind of situation he was coming home to so he could get a jump on things. He heard nothing, so he figured Martha was in her room watching television or sleeping and he felt safe to enter.

  Clyde had been avoiding Martha lately because she’d been dogging him about not going to school anymore. He knew that she wasn’t too concerned with his missing out on an education, but rather that his not going put her at risk for losing her monthly government subsidies and stipends such as food stamps.

  Martha was his mother’s best friend, and she took him and his two older brothers in when that thing happened with their mother and father nearly fourteen years ago. That fateful winter night the neighbors heard a fierce argument and struggle, followed by a loud shot. When the police arrived at the apartment, they found a woman slumped on the floor with a single gunshot wound to the head, surrounded by her three sons begging and crying for her to get up. On the bed sat her husband, dazed and confused, with a .38 revolver nearby, repeating over and over, “I don’t know what happened, I was drunk, I didn’t mean to do it.” Clyde’s father was arrested and convicted of attempted murder and had been incarcerated ever since. Their mother survived the shooting but was in a coma for several weeks after. When she finally awoke, she was in a vegetative state, leaving the boys motherless, fatherless, and, finally, hopeless. But as fate had it, the boys weren’t lost in transition. They were given to the closest next of kin the boys had, Martha Woods, who was their mother’s lifelong friend and confidante. She raised the boys as though they were her very own and ensured that they had an ongoing relationship with their mother over the years by taking them to the hospital and encouraging them to spend time with her even though she didn’t know they were there.

  When Clyde entered the kitchen, he was surprised to see not only Martha, but his two older brothers, Ceasar and Sonny. Sonny was trying to console Martha, who was sitting at the table crying her heart out. When he entered the kitchen, all eyes fell on him and he immediately felt uncomfortable.

  “Yo, where you been?” asked Sonny in his usual hostile tone.

  “You know where I was,” responded Clyde, matching his brother’s mean scowl.

  Sonny was the problem child of the family. He was barely nineteen years old and had already served two bids on Rikers Island on robbery charges. The tallest of the brothers, he would have been just another Pretty Boy Floyd with his light brown eyes if it weren’t for the long razor scar right below his cheek. Sonny was nicknamed “Set-it” because he was a live wire with a quick temper and would set it off on anyone at any time. He was so moody and unpredictable that most people kept their distance from him. The older Sonny got, the more brazen he became as he began to rob numbers holes, drug spots, or even kidnap for ransom. If there was a major stickup in Harlem, everyone knew who did it, but Sonny didn’t give a fuck. He’d tell you in a minute to “come get back if you think I did it” and bust his guns just for asking! He was the second oldest and fiercely loyal to Martha, because no matter what he did or how much trouble he got into, she stood by his side. She made sure that he was taken care of whenever he was away in police custody and always welcomed him home when he got out. As far as Sonny was concerned, Martha was his mother.

  Martha was in her midfifties and had spent most of her early years as a barmaid in local bars throughout Harlem and the Bronx. In her later years, she began to work in numbers holes for some of the local betting spots. She and the boys’ mother, Cathy, were inseparable in their younger days. They used to dress alike, stay over at each other’s houses for days on end, and tell everyone they were sisters. They even lost their virginity the same night together by twin brothers. Martha was with Cathy the night she met Lamont Barker in the Baby Grand Bar on 125th Street one Saturday night. Lamont was a ladies’ choice in the club that night because he was tall, dark, and handsome in every sense. He was a sharp dresser and had his own Cadillac and, most important, had a job. Though at twenty-nine he was much older and more experienced than the nineteen-year-old Cathy Bellows, they fell madly in love and married soon after. Martha, of course, didn’t approve of her homegirl marrying the older man and the disruption of their relationship; however, she was the bridesmaid at her wedding.

  “Well, you should have been here for Martha when she needed you,” Sonny said.

  Clyde was the only brother who still lived under Martha’s roof, but he rarely saw her lately because he usually got home in the wee hours of the morning and was back on the street before Martha awakened. The only reason he was home so early tonight was to retrieve some things from his room for a job he had later.

  Clyde shifted from one leg to the other impatiently. Sonny continued, “What you need to be doing is making sure Martha’s all right instead of riding around Harlem on a fucking ice bike.”

  “Fuck you, Sonny, at least I got a job. I ain’t sticking people up. ”

  Sonny chuckled and said, “Nigga, please, you call that a job? You make what . . . twenty, thirty dollars a day at most?” He laughed again. “And don’t think for a second that I don’t know yo’ ass, either. You just like me, but you afraid to admit it.”

  Martha had had enough. “Would y’all please stop arguing?” She stared at both boys as they put their heads down. Ceasar remained quiet and listened.

  Ceasar was the eldest and most stable of the brothers. He was the shortest one at five feet ten and had worked as a bank teller for more than four years, ever since his senior year in high school. He was highly detailed, methodical, and an immaculate dresser. Extremely guarded by nature, Ceasar had had more than his share of beautiful young women in his life, but lately, he’d been working so hard with his day job at the bank and college in the evening that he hadn’t much time to date. Since he was paying for college, he was struggling to keep up with his bills.

  “Now,” Martha continued, “what we need to be concentrating on is how I’m gonna manage my rent and bills now that they cut Clyde off my budget.”

  “Well, what do you want us to do, Martha?” Ceasar questioned. “It ain’t like we can call those people up and make them give you money. You just gonna have to get a job or something.”

  Martha started crying even louder. Sonny was livid at his brother’s lack of concern. “Come on, Ceasar, how you gonna say that? Have you forgotten who you’re talking to, who raised us for the past ten, twelve years?”

  Ceasar rolled his eyes and said, “Well, what could we do?”

  Sonny walked over and said, “What you think? We could all chip in each week and make sure she straight. Or give her a lump sum and pay off the back rent and put some toward the future.”

  Ceasar said, “Chip in what? I got my own rent and bills to pay. I ain’t got no money to be paying somebody else’s bills. Who gonna help me if I can’t pay mine?”

  Sonny jumped in, “All we have to do is chip in each week and give—”

  Ceasar cut him off. “Chip in and pay what?” He sucked his teeth and continued, “Martha, did you expect to live off us for the rest of your life? You didn’t think we would all grow up and you would have to find someone else to leech off of!”

  Martha didn’t say a word, and Sonny and Clyde stared at Ceasar and wondered how he could be so cold toward her. Ceasar had enough and went for his jacket.

  Sonny knew he couldn’t talk his older brother into anything and just let it go. “That’s fucked up, Ceasar,” he managed to say as he watched his brother head out the door.

  “Well,” said Ceasar as he exited the apartment, “so is hell for all the shit you doing, Sonny!” Before Ceasar left he assured his younger brother, “Clyde, you can stay with me if they try p
utting pressure on you to give up all your money.” Ceasar slammed the door shut on his way out.

  Sonny didn’t like his brother’s selfishness, but he always respected him for having his own mind. Sonny felt Ceasar didn’t have the same temperament as he and his younger brother because he never got his hands dirty. Clyde, on the other hand, was a natural predator—a perfect stickup kid. Sonny should know, because he taught Clyde everything he knew. Clyde had instinct, something that couldn’t be taught, and most of all, he had nerves of steel. He and Clyde had been doing stickups and robberies together since they were preteens. They started their careers robbing and strong-arming paperboys on Sundays in Washington Heights in upper Manhattan for their papers, money, and shopping carts. From there, they began robbing college students and professors at the City College campus. Pretty soon after, they stuck up residences in housing complexes, small-time weed dealers, or anybody else who thought their shit was sweet. They had some rules back then, a sort of “stickup-kid rule of honor” that Sonny had made up and took very seriously.

  1. No robbing old people or pregnant women.

  2. No kids younger than themselves, unless they had a sweet ten-speed bike.

  3. Don’t hurt the vics if they give it up, but if they resist, do everything in your power to break their fucking jaw.

  4. Always give a portion of earnings to the household.

  “Fuck it,” Sonny said as he locked the front door behind his brother. “Don’t worry about nothing, Martha. Me and old boy here,” he said while looking at Clyde, “we gonna handle this shit.”

  He tapped Clyde on the shoulder and gestured for him to follow into the bedroom. Sonny was already pitching his caper to Clyde before he even took off his jacket. “Yo, I got word of this sweet spot up in the Bronx.” Clyde sat on the bed and remained silent. He never knew who was giving Sonny the information on stickup jobs, but they were always reliable. “Only one gun in the place, put his ass down and everybody ready to give it up.” He stared at his younger brother to see if he would bite.