“Yeah, but we not back home, ’Lando! We in Miami with platinum credit cards and weed dat smell like apple pie! Come on, man, we go through this all the time. Leave Southeast in Southeast! It’s gonna be there waitin’ for you when you get back.”
Orlando was one of those people who thrived on confrontation, so he wasn’t happy that I was ending another would-be shootout. I didn’t care. I stepped out of the limo and faced the would-be gunman.
“Yo, on my strength, can we jus’ dead this whole thing? My man get a lil crazy sometimes, Matter ’fact, here you go.”
I looked around to make sure there was no one in uniform, climbed into the limo, and beckoned the guy to follow me. After he’d walked up to the door, I reached under the seat at the far end of the limo and grabbed a bag with two ounces of Purple Haze, the same weed we were smoking last night.
“I know my man acts stupid sometimes. This here’s for yo’ trouble.”
Honestly, I thought he was going to start crying. Without a word, he put the bag under his shirt and walked over to his companions. After he got them to huddle around, he showed them what he’d been given and they all caught the holy ghost.
Orlando looked around, confused, before his light bulb turned on.
“Yo, I know you ain’t just give ’em the cush!!!”
I turned swiftly and glared at Orlando, and then focused on Ray, Brian, and Henry behind him.
“Take him inside! Get him drunk, get him blazed, do whatever you gotta do, but make sure he don’t start no more trouble!”
Grateful to still be alive, the three of them took a reluctant Orlando and went inside the mall. I jumped back into the limo with a chorus of gratitude behind me.
“Thank you, Nigga! Thank you, man! Thank you!”
Five minutes later, I was reading SaTia’s mind as we were driving down the road. I decided to let her speak for herself.
“You need to get rid of him.” She spoke matter-of-factly as she continued on her laptop.
“Come on, SaTia, he’s like my brother. You know how many times we’ve gone to war together?”
“I don’t care. It’s just a matter of time before he gets himself into something that you can’t get him out of.”
“Look, I’ll talk to him again tonight, aight? Now let’s change the subject. What we talkin’ ’bout at this meetin’?”
“Remember to reassure Mr. Rose about finishing the next album...” She said some other things as well, but I wasn’t paying attention to her. We were the only two people in a rolling palace that must’ve comfortably sat twenty people, and tense situations always made me think of sex afterward. I began to imagine what the girls would look like who’d fill the limo seats later tonight.
“Moe! Moe, are you listening? Take your mind off your dick for a second and pay attention!”
I hated it when she read my mind.
“Aight, man! Okay! What is it?”
“I said, remember to tell Mr. Rose you’ll be done with the album by next month. They’re worried about you missing the deadline.”
I showed SaTia the resentfulness I had yet to show Mr. Rose.
“To hell with them! Look, I’m the CEO of Deez Nutz Records. I make more money for these people than they can count. I’ll put out an album when I wanna put out an album!”
Every once in a while, all the hype surrounding a celebrity goes to their head. They begin to believe they’re invincible because it’s their name people are screaming when they come to a concert or see them in public. This was one of those moments that SaTia called “lapses.” She had long since taken it upon herself to be my wake-up call.
She stopped typing long enough to reach over and slap the back of my head.
“Shut up,” she said as if she were teaching me a lesson.
“Why you...?”
“’Cause I’m not gonna keep preaching the same sermon to you over and over again, Moe!”
“What sermon?”
I already knew the monologue well enough to mouth it by heart, but it still pissed me off when she recited it. When you feel like you own the world, there’s something piercing about someone telling you what you can’t do.
She turned away from me and back to her laptop.
“I’m not gonna say it again.”
“Why not? You never believed in me from the start, did you? You kill my dream all the rest of the time, you might as well go ahead and do it again now.”
SaTia slammed her laptop closed. I could tell she considered throwing it at me. When she turned to me again, she looked like a bull preparing to charge.
“You are such an idiot! If I didn’t believe in you, why in the hell would I still be here?”
I decided not to respond. Even when I was mad, I’d long since decided there was only so far I was willing to push this woman.
“I’m only telling you the truth, Moe! Deez Nutz is your crew. Brian, Orlando, Ray, and Henry—all dudes we grew up with who could rap. You got signed by Cosmos Records and Cosmos Records let you form Deez Nutz and bring your friends along, but they still own you. You signed a contract, Moe. Legally binding! When it’s up, then you can talk about trying to do your own thing. Until then, you jump when they tell you to jump.”
An image of Mr. Rose popped into my head. He was telling me to jump, and I was hopping from one foot to the other like a monkey. Eventually, he fell to the ground and started rolling with laughter.
“Forget that! Da Nigga don’t jump for nobody!”
“You already have, Moe. You remember the first song you ever wrote? Back in seventh grade? You remember what it was about?”
Suddenly, I wanted the conversation to end. I looked at my childhood friend and shook my head, begging her to stop talking. I knew she wouldn’t, though. That was never her style. I’d opened up Pandora’s Box, and she was going to make sure everything got out.
“You don’t remember, Moe? Huh? ’Cause I do. It was about Kia Morris, in the eighth grade. About how her dad had molested her and how she tried to kill herself. Remember you spit the lyrics for her and she started crying in the library? And then she asked you to do it again at the talent show. Nobody in the school knew what to say to her until you performed that song. You made everybody know how she felt. You remember that?”
I began to feel like SaTia had her hands around my neck. I rolled the window down to try and get some fresh air.
“You remember your second song? About the homeless guy who was always on MLK Avenue when we caught the bus home from school? Or the third one, about the slaves we had talked about during Black History Month? You remember any of those, Moe? ’Cause last I remember, Da Nigga’s latest single was ‘Hoes In Da Attic.’ So don’t tell me Da Nigga don’t jump for nobody!”
I hit the intercom button and the driver answered immediately.
“Yes, sir?”
“Pull over!”
“Yes, sir!”
The limo cut sharply to the right and pulled up against the curb in a suburban area. Cookie cutter homes welcomed me as I bolted from the limousine cabin. Anyone who saw me jump out would’ve expected flames from the sunroof as well.
SaTia waited a few seconds after I had jumped out, and then followed me. I was sitting on the curb, coughing and trying to regulate my breathing when she joined me.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a long silence.
Though I already knew what I wanted to ask her, I hadn’t regained enough air to speak without wheezing. We spent another fifteen minutes just sitting there, waiting for my lungs to relax.
Once I ceased to sound like a fat man on a stair climber, I turned to her. As I opened my mouth, I wondered if she knew what I was going to ask. Better yet, I wondered if she knew how many times I wanted to ask her before. I spoke as though I was afraid of my own words. “Why are you still here, SaTia? If you’re so disappointed in me, then why are you still here?”
She smirked and chuckled to herself. “You pay well.”
“Yeah, I do, but that’s n
ot why you’re still here.”
She started looking around, taking in all her surroundings. I learned in middle school that was what she did when she was really thinking hard about something.
I can’t even count the number of times I’d wanted to ask that question in the past, but I’d always been afraid of that moment. Of her looking around and thinking hard, and then looking back and realizing that she shouldn’t still be here with me. She should’ve been off reuniting with the boyfriend she had in college or trying to earn her master’s and doctorate degrees. She should’ve been off heading the missionary society of a church somewhere. There were a million and one other things she could’ve been doing with her life.
In fact, there wasn’t one logical reason I could think of for her to stay. As my manager of three years, I was sure she had saved enough money to pay for tuition in any graduate program she wanted to go to, and even after that, she’d still have enough to live comfortably. And if she ever needed anything, I’d be happier to give it than she’d be to receive it.
This is it, I thought to myself. She’s going to leave.
After what seemed like millennia, she finally turned back to me.
“I guess...I’m still here because no matter what you say in your songs, or how many of those ridiculous teeth you wear, or even how many women you sleep with, in the end, I still see the little boy rapping offbeat in seventh grade.”
Her words raped me. I couldn’t have been more penetrated in a jailhouse shower.
“I may be the last person on earth who knows who you really are,” she added.
Men (urban men especially) have a whole repertoire of things we do to keep from crying. I pulled out an old favorite and bit down hard on my bottom lip.
“Excuse me, sir? Is everything okay?”
The driver had gotten out from his seat behind the wheel. He was younger than I expected. In another time he would have been called a half-breed or a mulatto. As it stood now, he was a pretty boy with good hair. He was obviously nervous about confronting me, but his curiosity had gotten the best of him.
I turned Da Nigga back on instinctively.
“Yeah, we good, man! Lil’ bit a privacy’d be cool, though.”
His embarrassment began to show through his cheeks and perspiration. Most of the time I never saw the full faces of my limo drivers, just the shot of their eyes reflecting in the rearview mirror when they were paying too much attention to the party in back.
I was known for giving my chauffeurs a story to tell the next morning.
“I’m sorry, sir...I...thought I heard you choking or crying or something...”
“Naw, youngin, you heard wrong. You musta smoked more than me dis mornin’. Go ’head and get back behind the wheel so we can roll out—we getting up right now.”
“Yes, sir!”
The driver jogged back over to the driver’s-side door and leaped in. SaTia looked at me and shook her head slightly. She debated in her mind for a half-second before she threw caution to the wind.
“I want to tell you something, but after I say it, you have to pretend like you never heard it. You can’t ask any questions about it or anything. It was never said.”
“Like we used to do in high school?”
“Yeah, just like that. Deal?”
I acted as if I was thinking about it, but I’d have given up a hit record to hear what she was going to say.
“Umm...yeah, sure. What’s up?”
SaTia surveyed her surroundings again, and then turned her head and looked straight at me.
“At some point, you’re going to have to decide whether you’re Da Nigga or Moses Jenkins. When that day comes, I’ll either marry you or quit.”
She was back in the limo tapping away on her laptop before I closed my mouth. I had more questions than an insecure spouse, but I knew the rules all too well. She’d never said it. The words had never come out of her mouth. That’s how we got away with telling other people’s secrets in high school, and that’s how she was getting away with torturing me now.
By the time I stood back up, I could see the driver getting antsy again. I didn’t care. I slowly walked up to the door of the limo and climbed in like a sore tennis player.
“I hate you,” I said.
“I know.”
She gave me a quick glance, hit the intercom button, and put her focus back on her e-mail. The enthusiastic driver responded in record time.
“Yes, sir?”
“Hi...this is SaTia. I’m Da Nigga’s manager. Can you get us to The Marbury restaurant as quickly as possible, please? We’re late for a very important meeting.”
“Right away, ma’am!”
As our chauffeur pretended he was behind the wheel of an ambulance, I pretended I wasn’t sitting beside a person who could turn my world like a nauseous stomach.
I had thought a lot of things before SaTia and I walked into that restaurant, but there were two things I thought I was sure of. First, I thought I had been to some of the best restaurants anyone had ever seen. I figured that was one of the perks of being rich.
Ironically, that was the second. I thought I was rich.
I had never seen anything like The Marbury. It looked like a place out of one of those black and white movies where a man and woman always end up dancing the night away. The floors sparkled, the glasses sparkled, the cups sparkled, the plates sparkled—I couldn’t figure out how someone could eat here and not be depressed by what they would have to go home to. All the waiters had skin colors that contrasted with their white tuxedoes. There was lady in a black gown playing the harp, and a man in a black tuxedo playing the piano beside her. Their skin colors contrasted with their clothes as well.
I saw the patrons talking to one another, but I quickly realized that they were all speaking a language I wasn’t wealthy enough to understand. To me it all sounded like “Moneymoneymoney? Moneymoney...Moneymoneymoneymoney.”
I wondered if I’d ventured off to the bathroom, would I find unflushed hundred dollar bills floating in the toilet.
SaTia spotted Mr. Rose sitting at the back of the restaurant. She nudged my shoulder and motioned toward his table. He had a plate of culinary art sitting in front of him, and was focused on trying to eat as much of it as he could without ruining its beauty. After taking three steps in his direction, he managed to glance up long enough to notice our approach. His attention quickly shifted from his postmodern plate to the two urbanites coming his way. He stood up and spoke with a jovial seriousness.
“Nigger! Where have you been? I thought we were going to be able to eat, but we’ll have to make this quick now. Come on here and take a seat!”
Sometimes people get killed for a reason no one ever finds out. You can question the person who did it for hours and hours, and even if they admit that they committed the murder, they won’t tell you the reason. They’ll get sentenced and go to jail and spend huge chunks of their lives behind bars, but will never tell you what motivated them. They won’t tell you, because a lot of times even they don’t know. A normal guy may have never had any interaction with a gay person, until one day he gets hit on by a flamboyant man in a miniskirt and blows his brains into his wig. Or a girl completely suppresses her memory of being raped until a drunken guy shoves his hand under her skirt and ends up with an ice pick in his larynx. Someone says or does something that touches an unknown, unforgiving button, and in the blink of an eye a college athlete or a petite secretary is standing over a dead body wondering what kind of computer glitch just altered their reality...
Standing there, in that restaurant, with billionaire couples smirking at the privilege of hearing a racial epithet in public, I found out I had a button that could be pushed. And if I had a gun, Mr. Rose would have died where he stood.
Rage glued my Nikes to the plush carpet and held me there. Just as I resolved to do something violent, SaTia leaned over and whispered to me.
“You chose the name, Moe. I told you from the beginning that a lot of white f
olks don’t know the difference. It was bound to happen sometime.” She paused and glanced up to see my top row of teeth sinking into my lower lip. “You better chill out. If you kirk out in here, you can kiss all your money goodbye.”
I swear having her around was like having a walking reality check.
All the black waiters had paused just long enough to see how I would react. A black guy in urban clothing with dark sunglasses and a grill in his mouth had just been called a nigger in front of about thirty rich white people. Two of the waiters looked poised to dive onto the ground. They glanced from me and to one another, smirking at the possibility of an oppressor being massacred.
It was too late, though. The image of me back in the hood, broke, with a dirty wifebeater and a malfunctioning Tech-9 had sobered me up. SaTia’s inconvenient truth had left me flaccid.
After a few seconds passed, each member of the serving staff took turns calling me an Uncle Tom with their eyes before they returned to gently placing beautiful cloth napkins on the laps of rich white people.
“Let’s just sit at the table so you can calm down,” SaTia said. “I’ll do all the talking, you just pull yourself together.”
We walked up to Mr. Rose’s table and sat down in front of him. As he opened his mouth, I found myself again trying to tame the wild animal trapped inside of me.
“I assume you all got tied up back at the hotel? I guess when it comes to making stars, we know what we’re doing, huh?”
He looked at me, expecting some sort of jovial gratitude. I just stared back at him, trying not to envision blood squirting from his throat.
Not getting the reaction he was looking for, his eyes betrayed the smile on his face. At that moment, I was nothing but an ungrateful nigger. I reached out for the salt shaker with the worst of intentions. Before I could even get a good grasp on it, SaTia reached over and took it out of my hand.
“Thank you.” She smiled at me, but somehow whispered the word “stop” through her grinning teeth. Then she turned back to Mr. Rose. “I go completely postal if I don’t have enough salt in my food, so he always makes sure I have it on my side of the table.”
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