True to the Game I

by Teri Woods

  “No, and if there was, I would tell you,” he said, ever so sincere. He got up to leave and Gena watched him as he walked across the floor.

  “Damn, I love that motherfucker.”

  “We know, there’s no doubt.” Lita’s sarcastic charm couldn’t let that pass by.

  “Well, I know everybody thought the house was coming down,” said Bridgette.

  “Shit, Gena did tear it down,” Lita chimed in. “I’m glad Gena beat that bitch up, ’cause if she hadn’t, it would have been a whole different story.”

  “Yeah. She dealt with the situation rather well, didn’t she?” said Bridgette.

  “Better than me, ’cause I would have killed the bitch,” said Lita looking at Bridgette as if to say, Now try your luck with Rik. Gena left the table and followed Quadir.

  Qua poured her a glass of Dom and walked her to a table, with Rik and Black opposite them ordering another bottle of champagne.

  “It’s crowded in here, Qua.”

  “I know. Too crowded for me.”

  “So, that is Cherelle,” she said.

  “Yeah, that’s her.”

  “Well, she’s better-looking than I thought.”

  “She don’t look good to me, and I don’t want to talk about her no more.”

  She wanted to have a good time and decided that, as the saying goes, there’s no need crying over spilled milk. She kissed her man gently on the lips and went back to the table with Lita and Tracey.

  A hush rustled through the club a minute or so later when Pam came in. Her entrance was definitely remarkable. Pam was sharp. She knew exactly what to do with Black’s money. She wore it well. “Where’s Bridgette, ’cause she could get her ass kicked next up in this motherfucker,” whispered Lita, nodding Pam’s way so Gena could see what she was talking about. “Mmm, hmm. That’s another one that’s gonna end up getting hurt for fucking with somebody’s man. Shit, Bridgette gots to be crazy. Ain’t no dick worth having to deal with Pam. I don’t know how Black even find bitches crazy enough to fuck with him, ’cause Pam don’t be bullshitting.”

  “Oh yeah, Pam rolls on motherfuckers about her man,” agreed Gena.

  “Shit, the motherfuckers been together since eighth grade.”

  “Where’s Tracey?” Gena asked.

  “She’s over there talking to Muhammad,” pointed Lita.

  “Oh,” said Gena. “Maybe I found her a friend.”

  “She looks like she needs one,” said Lita, glad she didn’t seem to have to worry about her fucking with Rik.

  The guys had come back to the table with bottles of champagne. Black pulled out a spliff and started smoking it. Pam looked at him. “Black,” she said, “you’re not supposed to do that.”

  “Who paid here, Pam? Huh? Who?”

  “You did, Black.”

  “Okay then,” he said, passing it to Qua.

  “Sit your Happy Birthday ass down, nigga,” said Rik. “Didn’t nobody ask you who paid.”

  Everybody was having a good time when Blair walked over to the table. He greeted everyone and gave his best wishes to Black.

  “This is my wife, Blair. This is Gena.”

  “Oh! It’s nice to meet you. Do you like your car?”

  “I love my car. How do you know about my car?”

  “He sold it to me,” Qua told her.

  “I suggested that he get that particular car. Do you like it?”

  “Definitely,” she cooed. “It’s so blue.”

  “I know, I like that color.” He didn’t get it, but it didn’t matter. Just then Andrea walked up to the table, as if she belonged.

  “Girl, what are you wearing?” asked Gena.

  “Looks like nothing to me,” whispered Qua.

  “Nigga, you better stop looking,” said Gena with an evil glow.

  “Do you like?” asked Andrea.

  “Do you?” Gena hissed, nudging Lita under the table. Gena wanted Andrea and her see-through dress away from her man, far the fuck away. You could see, but you couldn’t see. It was one of those dresses that would make you stare until you did see something. “Thank God it’s dim in here,” said Andrea.

  “How could a person come out lookin’ like that?” said Lita, challenging the girl.

  Oh, shit, Gena thought. Here goes Lita. Qua was looking, everybody was looking, and Andrea just played it off all the while, deeply knowing that they were all jealous of her. She was body, and those bitches, especially Lita, were just jealous. Of course, Rik’s slobbering on himself didn’t help.

  Kim, from out of nowhere, walked up to the table. “Andrea,” she said, hugging her.

  “Oh, no. They got to go away from here,” said Lita with her eyes on Rik the whole time.

  “So, Gena, what’s up? How you been?” said Kim.

  “Oh, I’m fine,” she said, expressing just how fine she was with her left hand.

  “I heard about you, Quadir. You naughty, naughty boy,” she said, hitting his hand as if that was just punishment.

  “I’m glad. I’m glad you know now, Gena.”

  This bitch is crazy, thought Lita, looking at Gena, silently asking her if she wanted to roll on ’em. To ease the tension Rik was feeling from these unwelcomed travelers of the night, he decided to add relevance. “Does anyone have the time?”

  Everyone especially looked at him as if he were crazy. “Oh, I have a Rolex. I forgot.”

  “Damn Black, where’s the food at?” asked Kim.

  “It’s over there,” said Black, glad they’d gone over there before something was said and Pam came out her shit.

  “That’s Forty, right?” whispered Tracey, star bound.

  “Yeah, that’s Forty in the blue,” said Lita. Pausing, she added, “I heard he got Richard Allen locked.”

  “I heard he got a nice shot,” whispered Gena as she sipped her champagne.

  “Mmm, hmm, I heard that shit too,” said Lita looking at him, wondering if his dick was as big as everyone made it out to be.

  “I heard Forty eats the shit out of some pussy, too,” whispered Gena, knowing the rumors had to be true.

  “Would you fuck him?” asked Lita as the girls looked Forty up and down.

  “No,” snickered Gena as Quadir wrapped his arm around her.

  I would, thought Tracey to herself.

  Oh, shit. There goes Jamal, Gena noted to herself. It had been such a long time since she had last seen him. Sahirah’s funeral. That was the last time, as a matter of fact, with bitch-ass Kim on his hip. Gena just turned away and pretended she hadn’t even noticed him. She didn’t fool Qua, though. He saw everything.

  Just then, Brother Ramier came by with greetings. “As-Salaamu Alaikum,” said Brother Ramier.

  “Alaikum As-Salaam,” said Quadir, as the brother greeted Rik and Black. “How you doing, Bridgette?”

  “Hi, how you doing, Ramier?”

  Gena could tell something was up; Bridgette had too many skeletons in her closet for there not to be something going on. Rich Green, Charlie, Kevin, Coleone, Winston, Amar, Rock, Black, all the big boys, their brothers and cousins, the list went on and on.

  Rasun and Reds came downstairs.

  “Black, where did you get the girl in the see-through dress to do your party?” asked Rasun.

  “I want her at my party,” said Reds.

  “I didn’t get no naked lady,” said Black, as if the young boys were bugging.

  “They talking about that whore, Andrea,” said Lita.

  Gena started laughing. “She came like that, Rasun.”

  “Well, damn! I thought she was getting paid to wear that.”

  “My bucks, they’ve grown up, haven’t they, y’all?” said Qua. Everybody toasted to Qua’s squad of young boys.

  “Damn, I really thought you paid a motherfucker to dress up like that,” said Rasun.

  “Maybe soon all of them will dress like that,” said Reds.

  “I hope so,” said Ra.

  “If you pay ’em enough, they’ll do
anything you want,” said Ramier, looking at Bridgette, remembering the night he and two of his boys did her in a hotel room. Sis was a serious gun. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her.

  “Qua, come on. Let’s go upstairs.” Black and Rik got up from the table. “Q, you coming or what?” asked Black.

  “Gena, stay here. I’ll be right back,” said Qua.

  “Why do they always say stay here?” Gena asked Lita.

  “They don’t want you to follow them ’cause they don’t want to get caught.”

  “I’m tired. What time is it?” Gena looked at her Rolex, answering her own question.

  “What time is it?” asked Pam.

  “It’s four o’clock,” she said, looking at her cousins standing over by the bar. “I’ll be right back.” She left the table and walked straight over to Bria and Brianna.

  “What are you two doing here? How did you get in? You’re only sixteen.”

  “We came with this guy,” said Brianna.

  “Bria, I don’t know why you’re standing there with an attitude. You should be at home. I can tell on you, you know,” said Gena.

  “You gonna tell anyway, ’cause that’s how you roll. So what difference does it make?” she said, staring Gena eye to eye.

  “Have you been drinking, Bria? Oh my God. Both of you have been drinking. You need to go home now,” said Gena.

  “Why? You go home,” Bria said, as she walked away looking for her ride home.

  “She got so much to say for someone who never says anything to me at all. She lucky I don’t hurt her in here,” said Gena.

  “Gena, don’t pay Bria no mind.”

  “Brianna, what are you doing in here? You’re not supposed to be in no club. If Gah Git knew . . . ” Gena didn’t even want to think of what would happen to them. “I bet she knows you’re not in the house and is worried half to death.”

  Suddenly, Gena thought she was in a western film in the middle of a cattle stampede. Her heart stopped as the sound of gunfire unleashed itself above. People were scrambling trying to find safety. Bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap. Screaming could be heard above and below, and a mad rush for the lower level caused people to trample over one another and fall down the stairs. Gena grabbed Brianna’s arm and took her behind the bar.

  “Stay down!” she said as the girls huddled about for safety. The gunfire was ongoing, and Gena could distinguish the sounds of several different guns. It was true blue pandemonium. The music had suddenly stopped, and Gena realized that the quiet before the storm was the result of the DJ’s panic in separating the plug from its outlet while scrabbling under his turntables in a move focused completely toward survival.

  The lower level was now filled with all those who had been upstairs. A last shot was fired and silence reigned. Slowly, almost as one, the members of Black’s birthday party began lifting their heads and looking about, but none moved as if to do so would violate the certainty the silence inspired. And through the silence, Gena heard her own certainty calling to her.

  “Gena! Gena! Gena!” It was her man. He was covered with blood, but he was alive, and that was all that mattered.

  “Quadir!” Gena popped up from behind the counter.

  “Baby, come on! We got to get out of here!”

  “I’m so glad you’re okay, baby. I was worried. I was so scared! Qua, look at you. You didn’t get shot, did you?” Qua seen that she was shaking as if a seizure was imminent.

  “Gena, calm down.” He suddenly noticed something wrong with the picture, as though anything could be wronger. “What are you doing here, Brianna?”

  “I don’t know, but this is not where I am trying to be,” she said with a personable attitude.

  “Qua, what happened?” Gena was still rooted to the spot as Pam and Lita ran over to them.

  Lita’s expression changed rapidly from hope to loss and back to hope again.

  “Q, where’s Rik?”

  Quadir stopped, turned around to her, and took Lita by the shoulders. “Lita, Rik got hit. He’s upstairs. Lita, I can’t stay. You got to help Rik, baby. You got to stay with Rik and don’t tell the police shit. Black got hit, too.”

  “What?” said Pam as she pushed her way to get to the stairs.

  “Oh, my God! Qua, what is going on?”

  “Gena, baby, I don’t know.”

  “Is it safe to go outside?”

  “Baby, I don’t know. Where’s the Benz?” asked Qua.

  “On Market Street, two blocks down, right on the corner of Fifty-eighth.”

  “This is what I want you to do. Wait for me upstairs. Wait for me!” he said as they reached the top of the stairs. She handed him the keys. “Gena, stay inside.”

  “I will. Qua, please be careful, baby.” Pam and Lita were frantically searching for Black and Rik among the bodies, lying under tables, or slumped in booths. Gena, surveying the carnage, couldn’t believe what her eyes told her was the truth: there were five to ten people lying dead in pools of blood, others were hit and injured. Gena, unable to move, looked from one face to another, hoping to see Black or Rik.

  Pam stopped dead, seeing the suit, knowing the shoes, recognizing the jewelry as her mind was telling her she’d found the one she searched for, her breath frozen in her throat. Finally, she screamed. “Omigod! No! No! Baby, please, no! Not Black!” Brianna was nauseous as Pam stood there looking at flesh parts covered in blood. But through the blood, the parts of his body that no one ever saw, the organs whose job it was to keep Black walking, talking, smiling, reproducing, thinking, and functioning under the covering of skin that protected them, were now outside his body. The skin blown apart by the force of the infrared glock .45 covered the walls. It looked as if the protective covering keeping everything together had been shredded off of him. He was gone, Black was gone. Gena heard another voice call out, “Omigod, Rik!” Lita was shouting, “Please! Where you at, man! Come on, Rik! Answer me!” at the top of her lungs.

  Gena saw a chair moving, hope filling her and replacing the horror. “Lita! Over there!” She pointed toward the corner. It was him. It was Rik, under a table.

  “Lita, don’t move him. Wait for the ambulance. Don’t move him.”

  Lita found her way to him. “Okay. Okay. Rik, baby, can you hear me?” She gently covered his hand with hers, continuing to murmur gently.

  Pam was in shock, unaware of anything going on around her. People were trying to get out of there, giving thanks to God it wasn’t them on the floor. As they glanced at the bodies and the blood, no one stopped to acknowledge the others who were looking for loved ones, friends, and grieving over what they found.

  “Here’s Qua,” Brianna said, hanging out the doorway.

  Gena looked at her friend, “Lita, I got to go.” But Lita didn’t respond, she took a deep breath, ordering herself to function. “Okay, Gena.”

  “Can you help Pam?” asked Gena.

  “Pam? Pam who? My man might die, Gena. Shit, can she help me, ’cause Black is gone and I don’t want to lose mines! Please don’t leave me, Tyrik!” She held his hand and started crying. “Where the fuck is the paramedics?” she hollered.

  Gena grabbed her friend’s shoulder trying to calm her down before she left. “We’ll page you.” Brianna and Gena ran over to the Benz, where Quadir had the doors opened, ready to speed them away.

  “Black is dead.” At that moment, Quadir went cold. He couldn’t think.

  Dead? Black? He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t want to believe it.

  “What happened, Qua?”

  “I don’t know. It happened so fast. They just started shooting at us! Damn, why Black and Rik?” he hollered as he pounded his fist on the steering wheel.

  Together, Rik and he were standing on the wall directly across the bar where Black was. The mirrors on both sides of the wall bounced a red light. Rik watched the light as he told Quadir to look at it. The mirror told the ending before it even began. The light ended at Black. As soon as they called out to him
, the bullets rang. Within seconds a bullet pierced Rik in the chest causing him to spin and take a hit in the back before falling down on top of Quadir. Quadir reached on the side of Rik for his gun. Tyrik used all his strength to grab his friends arm.

  “Don’t go up, Qua. If both of us die, who’s gonna make it?” he asked, as they stared each other in the eye.

  “You ain’t gonna die. Stop fuckin’ with me, baby.” Quadir looked at his friend who was half on the floor, half on him. “Don’t die on me, Rik.”

  Quadir wondered whether or not his friend was gonna make it. He was shot real bad. Checking the rearview mirror, his train of thought was completely interrupted. “What is Brianna doing here? Brianna, what do you call yourself doing? You’re sixteen! You’re not supposed to be out in no place like that! See what could have happened to you?” Gena had never heard Quadir use such force in his voice.

  “I know,” she sniffed. “I came with this guy, that’s all.”

  “Who’s the guy?” said Qua, ready to wring someone’s neck.

  “His name is Charlie.”

  Please don’t let it be Quick Pockets Charlie, he thought to himself. “Brianna, you stay out of those kind of places until you’re old enough to be in those kind of places, you understand? When you turn twenty-one, then you can go where you want. Until then, you need to keep yourself in the house where it’s safe so you can get to be the age twenty-one.”

  “Don’t worry. I will.”

  Just then a car pulled up along the opposite side of the street, and stopped in front of Gah Git’s house. A few seconds later Bria hopped and ran up the door.

  “What are you doing, Bria?” hollered Quadir, glad it wasn’t Quick Pockets Charlie she was with.

  “Shhh,” she said turning around to see Quadir, Gena, and Brianna.

  “Gena, I’ma kill ’em. Let me catch you out again, Bria,” Qua fussed waiting for them to get in the door. He pulled the Benz off of Gah Git’s block and went to a gas station. He drove on the sidewalk right up to the pay phone so that he wouldn’t have to get out of the car. He dialed Rik’s pager and within a few minutes Lita returned the call. She was frantic and Qua soothed her and told her he would be right there. He slid back into the driver’s seat and sped away.