by Brick
She reluctantly shook her head.
“Is there a reason why you haven’t?”
“I don’t know where she is.” Her voice was shaky. She was crying like she knew she was about to get her ass whooped. She had her purse covering half of her face while her eyes stayed locked on the cane on my hand. Her body was very familiar with this cane.
“You’re lying to me. I know you’re lying to me. Do you need more time or do you not know where she is. Which one is it?”
She didn’t answer quick enough. Her eyes widened when she saw my fist coming toward her face. She threw her hands up and her purse went flying across the car as she screamed bloody murder. Since she thought I was going for her face, she covered with her arms leaving her stomach open. My fist connected to her soft flesh and blood mixed with spit flew from her mouth.
“Fucking lie to me, bitch,” I growled as I repeated the strikes to her gut. “I’ma put you in the vicinity of where she’s been spotted daily again and this time”—I snatched her up by her hair with one hand and then forced her face down into the leather seat with the other—“this time, bitch, you better make contact.”
I knew she couldn’t breathe by the way she was flailing her arms about. The whimpers and muffled screams only served to make my dick harder and to make me angrier. The blows to the stomach had even made her piss her pants. However, her fat ass in the air like that made my dick hard and if bloody pussy didn’t stop me from fucking, neither would pissy pussy.
Chapter 21
Ray-Ray
“Would you forgive Dame if he came back and asked you for forgiveness?”
My head jerked to the side as I look at my friend, sometimes lover, Gina. Chyna’s eyebrow raised on the right side. She looked just as confused as I did.
“Um, where did that come from?” I asked her.
She ran a hand slowly down her stomach and with the way she stopped and cupped the bottom let me know she was thinking about the son or daughter she would never have. “Just asking,” she murmured.
Her eyes had watered as we walked. I stopped and turned to her so she could have my full attention. “No, you’re not. What’s going on, Gina?”
Traffic zoomed past us as we stood on Upper Riverdale Road across the street from a BP gas station. I studied Gina’s chocolate features as horns blared at us because of our attire. It was our duty to stroll these streets and turn heads. The tattoos, or tramp stamps as people in the hood called them, read ENGA just below the dip in our backs. It showed that we were a clique. There was another tattoo that sat just over my heart with the word TRIGGA’S etched inside of a heart. I’d just gotten it day before. He’d yet to see it, but even if me and him never got together, he would always have that place in my heart.
We all rocked the same side ponytail and had on shorts that rode almost too far up our asses with black tights underneath them. No matter what we set out to do each day I had to always remember it was only for show. That was what kept me going strong. To know that we were so close to killing that nigga Dante kept me on my game.
Chyna stopped walking and stood on the other side of Gina so we could both see her clearly. She was going through something and I wanted to know what.
She looked up me quickly then her eyes darted from side to side like she was trying to formulate her thoughts. “Me and Jake saw my mama the other day,” she finally said.
My eyes widened. Chyna looked on confused not knowing why my reaction was as such. Nobody knew that Jake and Gina snuck away and stole time together. Gina told me that she and Jake had just wanted to steal a few hours away too be a normal couple. I ain’t never tell Trigga because I figured Jake would since they were close like me and Gina.
“Say what now?” I asked.
“Yeah, me and him was sneaking out the movies. ’Cause like, we just trying to have some normal girlfriend/boyfriend type stuff. We ain’t ever really had that,” she said then looked down at the ground. A sad, dark expression washed over her face as she glanced back up at me. I felt a chill come over me. “But anyway, she called my name all loud and shit. She was there with some new nigga she fucking. She was always fucking some nigga. And he was married ’cause I seen the ring. She ain’t shit, but always wanna call me a ho and shit.”
“Damn, did you answer her?”
Gina nodded. “I ain’t really want to, but she had seen me then. I was kinda embarrassed ’cause I ain’t really want her to meet Jake and all you know? This bitch come running up to me hugging me and shit. I almost shanked her ass.”
“Bloody hell, Gina. Why yuh want fi shank your mum?” Chyna asked. She had a frown on her face that showed she would never understand Gina on that, but that was only because she didn’t know Gina’s mama. Gina’s mama had put her out on the street when she was just sixteen. That was when her life was put into Dame’s control.
“Because that bitch is fake. She ain’t right, Chyna doll. She ain’t right. She ain’t right!”
I grabbed Gina’s hands because I knew she was seconds away from pounding her closed fists on the sides of her head. By now, Gina had started to yell and the couple who had passed us started to look over their shoulders. I took Gina’s hand and started to walk again. I didn’t want to be in one place for too long because we were on a time frame.
“She hugged me, Ray-Ray, and I swear it felt like my flesh was moving, like worms under my skin. I don’t know why I felt like she was the reason that nigga stomped my baby outta me.”
Chyna stopped and raised both her hands as she shook her head. “Swear down! Who stomped a baby out of you, blood?”
I briefly explained to Chyna what Dame had done to me and Gina after we got set up by some people in his crew. Told her how they had made it look like me and Gina was trying to run away. After meeting Gina’s mama, I couldn’t be mad at Gina for feeling the way she did. Maybe if she had been a good mother, Gina would have had a better life. But I was more shocked at her hugging Gina. Last time we ran into the woman she acted like both Gina and I had Black Plague or something. I found that strange.
“Why she hugging you?” I asked. “That shit is suspect.”
“Same thing my teddy bear was saying because he know what I told him about her. Then this bitch gone talk about how she has always loved me and made a mistake and shit. Bitch, you ain’t made no damn mistake. For as long as I can remember she been a bitch to me, Ray-Ray. Jake was telling me you know not to snap and shit, but I felt funny ’bout her too, Ray. Thank ya for not making me feel stupid.”
“Naw, you ain’t stupid, Gina. I don’t trust that at all.”
Gina stopped again. Juicy J’s “Show Out” blasted from the speakers of a Cutlass Supreme with a candy red paint job and the logo for Skittles. Dirty niggas and bum bitches strolled about the hood as we walked through. Even though it was a little cold, bitches were still dressed like it was summertime. The smell of weed, alcohol, piss, and sour trash assaulted my nose and I knew we had made it to our destination.
“And you right too,” Gina said to me. “You know why? Bitch gon’ tell me when she found out she had cancer her way of thinking changed. So she only trying to get right with God so He won’t send her to hell where she belong.”
The three of us had been walking down Mt. Zion Road in Jonesboro. We’d parked our car near Arrowhead. After we walked through Highland Vista apartments, we made our way down Tara and jumped across to Mt. Zion. We were just about to walk back into the apartment complex when Dominique spotted me.
Highland Vista used to be called the Seasons before some other property management had bought it out, and now it was more hood than hood could get. Gang signs decorated the sides of buildings. Niggas stood outside with gold grills, souped-up whips, and loud rap music blasting. Pants sagged off asses showing dingy drawz and colorful boxers. Gold chains, some fake, hung around necks and swung low.
I was about to say something else when a voice behind me called my name.
“Oh my God! Ray-Ray, is that you?”
I turn
ed my head toward the direction of the familiar voice. It was a voice I hadn’t heard in months but would recognize anywhere. Gina and Chyna both turned to look with me. The combat boots on our feet made crunching noises as we all looked at the girl I’d once called a best friend.
“Who that bitch?” Gina asked loud enough for Dominique to hear.
Gina wasn’t trusting of nobody that wasn’t a part of our immediate family. She was always on alert and so was I for that manner. Dom was a mocha-hued girl with shoulder-length hair and green eyes. A light sprinkling of freckles were on her face just underneath her eyes and cheeks. While she had never been as thick as me, she could still wear her clothes to make it look as if she had curves. She had on a pair of skinny jeans and a midriff. She stopped her stride midway to me when she heard Gina call her a bitch and put her hands on her hips.
“Girl, who you calling a bitch?” she snapped. “I don’t know you and you damn sho don’t wanna know me, bitch, so you better calm all that hot shit down. Ray-Ray, who this girl and why she all hype and don’t even know me?” Dom had a look on her face that said something stunk.
“Yo, cuzzin, who dis bloodclaat gyal, eh? I swear down she can get got,” Chyna spoke up.
Dom turned her attention to Chyna and scowled harder. “Bitch, I don’t even know what’chu just said. Speak English, ho.”
I had no idea what Dom’s ass had even been doing around these parts. She was in Clay Co, short for Clayton County, and had no reason to be. She lived out in Henry County with well-to-do folks. The only reason she and I were friends was because my parents sent me to private school when they were alive.
But that had always been Dom. She wanted to hang in the hood. Loved to speak our language until she got back home around her parents. And she had always had the loudest mouth, talked the most shit, but could fight about as well as a seasoned crackhead could tell the truth. There had been plenty of fights I’d had to jump in because she’d written a check her ass couldn’t cash.
“Hey, Dom,” I spoke back to her. I couldn’t even lie and say I was happy to see her because I wasn’t. Not because I didn’t love her anymore, but because I wasn’t the same Ray-Ray she knew before. When she hugged me, I tensed up but returned her hug. I almost got teary-eyed because I barely remembered what it was to be that innocent sixteen-year-old I used to be.
She pulled back from the hug and looked at me. “Damn, bitch, rumor had it ya ass was dead. You know they found yo’ mama and daddy dead in the back of the Woods? What the fuck happen to you?”
Bringing up my parents took my already nonexistent excitement to see her down a few more notches. The Woods was another set of apartments in the hood, but I had already known that tidbit of information because Trigga had told me. He told me a lot of stuff in our time together.
“The cops put me in a safe house until they could get my mama and daddy’s killers,” I lied.
She looked skeptical. “That ain’t the shit I heard. Niggas was saying that nigga Dame had you hoing after he popped ya folks and before niggas bodied his ass.”
My jaw twitched in annoyance as I tried to keep my cool. “Oh, yeah? Who said that shit?”
“Girl, that shit was all over the hood.”
“What the fuck you know about the hood wit’cho white bread ass?” Gina asked out the blue.
I didn’t know what it was, but Gina and Chyna were not feeling Dom. Maybe it was because they could see how uncomfortable I was. Or maybe Gina was still tripping hard off running into her mama. I didn’t know. Part of me wanted to be happy to see her, but that other part of me, that new me, knew that she and I could never be as close as we used to be. I could never bring her into the world I was a part of. She had a chance to live life. Even though she was always hanging in the hood where her ass shouldn’t have been, she still had a very good chance of a normal life. I remembered when she and I used to hang around these hood niggas thinking that was life we wanted.
We would flirt around with the idea of being a made hood bitch, then sneak back in our perfect worlds. Dom didn’t ever know about how my mama and daddy did drugs. She never knew the way they fought one another because they knew how to keep on a good game face and because they tried their fucking hardest to keep me as far away from the streets as they could. I never wanted Dom to experience what I had been through.
“Bitch, I’m a li’l sick of you coming at me sideways, ho. I’ma give you a scar across yo’ fucking face to match yo’ neck,” Dom popped off at the mouth.
I knew before Dom even finished popping off it was a bad move. Gina reached in her back pocket and made a move toward Dom so quick that I didn’t even have time to stop her. Chyna simply stood back and smirked. Gina had slapped Dom so hard she flew back against a car and was laid out flat. I moved to stop Gina, but Chyna grabbed me.
“Li’l girl, I don’t know who the fuck you talking to, but let me hip your bony ass to something. If I sliced my own fucking throat, imagine what I’ma ’bout to do to yo’ fake Ciara wannabe ass,” Gina threatened as she squatted over Dom with a blade to her throat. I didn’t even realize that Gina had literally smacked the blood from Dom’s nose.
I struggled against Chyna’s hold. “Baby G, she’s cool people. Let her up, baby.”
“I don’t give no fuck if she cool people or not. Nobody ’bout to ever be talking down to me again.” She held the blade close to Dom’s throat. Ol’ girl’s eyes widened in honest terror as she looked up at Gina, but she wasn’t about to look like a punk in front of the whole hood.
“Bitch, you better get the fuck up off me or kill me. Otherwise when I get up you better be running,” Dom bluffed.
“Damn, shawty smacked the brown off baby girl,” one nigga said from the gathering crowd.
“Worldstar,” somebody else yelled out garnering a few loud laughs and low snickers.
“Oh hell naw, bitch. I know you don’t think you just ’bout to roll up in my set and be smacking bitches,” I heard a female call out.
We were drawing a crowd which was exactly what Trigga told us not to do. He’d said to make people notice us without them noticing us. You know, make ourselves seen around the way without making a scene around the way. But Dom didn’t know Gina and her mistake was thinking she could talk to her any kind of way. Gina and I talked about a lot and the one thing she was always afraid of was being back in a time when she allowed people to talk to and treat her any kind of way.
While Gina went to work smacking Dom around, I looked up to see who was talking and it was the same girl from our party a few nights ago. She still carried the scars of our battle from the party. As soon as she saw my face, she smirked. “Bitch, you bold,” was all she said before she came swinging for me.
I saw one of her friends grab Gina by her ponytail and start pulling her off Dom. Nothing else was said. All I saw was Chyna’s boot connecting to a girl’s leg. The sound of her knee cracking would forever be heard around the hood as niggas yelled oohs and ahhs. I took a fighter’s pose and swung on that big-titty bitch from the party. These hood bitches in the A would never be ready for a fight with the three of us, especially not Chyna. She’d grown up in London where they fought to kill not just for bragging rights. So even with two bitches on her she had the upper hand because they couldn’t handle her. Her mother’s and father’s teaching was in every punch, kick, and swing. When I saw Gina covered in blood, my heart started racing. I didn’t know if she had done the cutting or had gotten cut.
Either way, I had three bitches on me and they were tagging my ass, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. As I long as I saw Chyna and Gina was still standing, I was good. My adrenaline was on a hundred as my hair got pulled from left to right. Shirt got ripped from my body. But my fist kept connecting to faces and throats. See, I wasn’t about no jumping shit. My mama always said in a one on one if you got your ass beat then it just wasn’t your day. But daddy said soon as niggas and bitches decided to jump, it was all bets off. Out came my blade and the brass knuckles
. Yeah, those bitches ate my face up while I reached my weapons, but once my knuckles were on and my blade was in my hand, it was over. I sliced one bitch clear across her face. She screamed out and fell back, hitting her head on the ground.
All around me all I heard were yells of “Worldstar” and niggas geeked over titties popping out like they had never seen them before. Once it was down to me on two, I swung my fists and knocked one of those bitches’ head back. I could tell the brass knuckles had rattled her brains. She stumbled dazed but I didn’t have time to focus on her. My left hand came around and sliced the chick from the party chest. I wasn’t playing no fucking games with these hoes. I didn’t know who they were working for. Shit, I didn’t even know if Dom hadn’t set this whole thing up, but this shit was feeling suspect as fuck to me. Once I’d made the three hood monkeys back up off me I grabbed a bitch from behind who was helping to jump Gina. I hit that bitch so hard, I saw teeth fly from her mouth. Gina grabbed the other girl by her hair and slammed her down to the ground so hard I knew her skull cracked in a good three places.
I turned to see Chyna’s face had been sliced, but she was stomping a mud hole in a bitch on the ground. She had stomped her all the way under the car. We were so busy fighting that we didn’t even see that the cops had rolled up on us. When I went to try to kick one of the bitches that had jumped me, I felt my world tilt and I was slammed to the ground.
“Police! Get on the ground! Get on the ground,” rang out around me.
Walkie-talkies blared with calls for back up for gang-related activity and all I could think about was Trigga being pissed at us for getting locked up. The officer’s knee was in my back and he had my arms twisted so awkwardly behind my back that I felt like my shoulder was about to snap. Once he had me handcuffed me and searched my pockets, he snatched me up. He was a white man, looked to be only a few years older than me.
“Yeah, I got a black female, no ID,” he spoke into the walkie-talkie on his shoulder after he’d roughly searched my pockets.