Street Soldier

by Silhouettes

  “There’s a rumor goin’ around that you’re pregnant. Are you sayin’ it’s by me?”

  Her neck started to roll. I was starting to despise her more and more by the day. “It is by you and you know it. But I’m gon’ handle mine and you need not worry.”

  I held out my hands. “Hey, ain’t no sleep lost here. You need to stop lyin’ on a nigga and tell the truth. Besides, I ain’t even cum in you, girl. My dick can’t make babies, and when that mutha come out lookin’ like powder I want an apology.”

  Nadine started going off on me and Ms. Macklin came in. She slammed her books on her desk, causing everyone to get quiet.

  “Please,” she yelled. “I could hear all the loud talking down the hallway. Go have a seat Nadine, and, class, open your books to page 131.”

  Ms. Macklin rubbed her forehead to ease the tension. As we opened our books, I saw her reach for the note on her desk and open it. She read it, and without saying one word or looking my way, she tossed the note in the trash.

  She let out a deep sigh and placed her hand on her hip. She scribbled a math equation on the chalkboard and turned to the class.

  “Somebody come up here and work this,” she said, holding the chalk in her hand.

  Nobody moved, and everyone was looking around at each other. I looked at the algebra equation on the board again, and, knowing how to work it, I stood up. My torn jeans were low, so I pulled them up a bit to cover my drawers. Ms. Macklin handed me the chalk, and before I worked the problem, I rubbed my chin, pretending to be in deep thought. I looked at the tats on my muscular arms, and slightly lifted my body-hugging shirt to massage my tight abs.

  “Let’s see,” I said.

  Ms. Macklin sighed. “Will someone else come up to the board—”

  “Hold up, ma,” I said. “I got this.”

  “Ms. Macklin,” she said with snap in her voice, correcting me. “I’m not your ma.”

  I begged to differ, but didn’t challenge her. Instead, I worked the algebra equation and placed the chalk back on the board. Ms. Macklin looked it over, but couldn’t find nothing wrong.

  “Good job,” she said, already writing another one. She gave the chalk to me again, and I completed that one as well.

  “Well done, Jamal. Now, have a seat.”

  I took my seat, smiling my ass off. The girls looked impressed, but some of the fellas were hating.

  “Everyone, do pages 131, 132, 133.” Ms. Macklin paused and slowly flipped through the pages in her book. The class was moaning and groaning. She added two more pages, and the sighing got louder.

  “I can add another page, if you’d like. There are only five to ten questions per page, and even though it seems like a lot of work, it’s not. So get busy.”

  Everybody got busy, including me. I had so much work to catch up on, and before I knew it the bell was ringing. Ms. Macklin didn’t say anything to me about the note, but as I was leaving the class, Romeo’s ex, Sabrina, came up to me.

  “I’m likin’ how you do it, Prince. I saw your new pictures on Facebook, BlackPlanet, and MySpace. You need not be putting yourself out there like that. No wonder you got people out here anxious. Get at me soon, all right?”

  Sabrina walked away, but before she did, she gave me her phone number. I shook my head at how scandalous girls could be, but whenever an opportunity presented itself, I had to take it into consideration.

  As always, the lunchroom was packed. Romeo and I sat with some of the other players from the football team, and we were loud as ever. They’d lost the last game, and were mad as hell about me not being able to play in the next game. I hadn’t spoken to Coach Johnson yet, but I saw him enter the cafeteria with Ms. Macklin. Again, they seemed to be involved in a heavy conversation. The way she looked at him was the way she looked at me. Even her smiles showed interest, and he was just as excited. They sat down in the far corner, eating their lunches together. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of them, and that’s when Romeo poked me in my side.

  “What you lookin’ at?” he asked.

  I lowered my head and scooped my fork into the mashed potatoes. “Nothin’. Just thinkin’ about some shit, that’s all.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like why in the hell your trick Sabrina been tryin’ to get some of this,” I said, grabbing my crotch.

  Romeo cocked his head back. “What? When?”

  “Today, right after Ms. Macklin’s class, Sabrina gave me her phone number.”

  I removed the piece of paper with her number on it from my pocket and gave it to Romeo. “Okay, so she playin’, right? She gon’ hold back on me, but throw that shit at you? Okay, we gon’ see about that shit.”

  “I’m gon’ see about it too,” I laughed.

  Romeo looked shocked again. “So, are you gon’ fuck her?”

  “Hell yeah, I am. Why shouldn’t I? She ain’t with you no more.”

  Romeo scratched his head. “That’s fucked up, Prince, but do you.”

  “Nigga, I know you ain’t mad. If you are, then I won’t hit it. Personally, I think we should run a train on that bitch. That way you can get what was already due to you.”

  Romeo smiled and nodded. “Yeah. Brang your condoms, bro, and a whole lot of them ’cause I ain’t tryin’ to get no mo’ diseases. Sabrina ain’t nothing but a trick, and I lost respect for her, trying to get with you.”

  We slapped hands together and wiggled our fingers. I got up from the table to dump my tray in the trash. I was on my way to talk to Coach Johnson, but stopped at a table full of giggly girls.

  “What y’all laughin’ at?” I asked.

  “You,” one of them said. “Is it true that you got three babies on the way? I know you ain’t doin’ it like that.”

  “I got skills, but my sperm can’t make no babies. These chickenheads around here lyin’ on me, and y’all need to stop believin’ everything y’all hear.”

  Another one of the girls squeezed the muscles in my arm and observed my tats. “How you get your body like that?” she asked. “You straight, dude.”

  “Playin’ football and liftin’ weights.”

  “Are you playing in the game this weekend?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said, looking over at Coach Johnson, who was getting up from the table. I winked at the girls. “I’ll be back.”

  Their eyes stayed glued to me as I walked up to Coach Johnson.

  “Say, Coach, can we talk?”

  “Sure,” he said, then turned to Ms. Macklin. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

  She nodded and we left to go talk in his office. Coach Johnson invited me to have a seat, and he sat in the squeaky leather chair behind his overly cluttered desk.

  “I was wondering if I could play in the game this weekend.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you haven’t been to practice, and it’s not fair to the team if you’re allowed to play.”

  “I already talked to the fellas on the team and they want me to play.”

  “Well, they don’t call the shots around here, I do. And I say no way, no how, and no can do.”

  “We both know that you gon’ have a losin’ season if you don’t put me in. Why you trippin’ with me, Coach? You know I wanna play.”

  Coach Johnson sucked his teeth and put his hands on top of his head. “We’re already having a losing season, and I want to know why you keep trippin’ with me,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t exactly call losin’ two games havin’ a losin’ season. I ain’t trippin’ with nobody, I’m just tellin’ the truth.”

  “I’m being truthful with you too. You’re not playing this weekend, and you won’t play the following weekend unless you come to practice. The end of the semester is coming, and I hope your grades are straight. If not, I’m taking you completely off the team.”

  I lowered my head and rubbed my forehead. “This all about Ms. Macklin, ain’t it? You trippin’ with me because of her.”

  He immediat
ely got defensive. “What? You’d better stop talking crazy. This has nothing to do with Ms. Macklin, and, quite frankly, if it weren’t for her you would have been off the team.”

  “Then you’re upset because your woman lookin’ out for me, right?”

  He chuckled. “She’s not my woman. Why in the hell would you imply something like that?”

  “’Cause I know she your woman just by the way she looks at you.”

  Coach Johnson cleared his throat and stood up. “I’m not having this conversation with you, Jamal, and if anything is going on between me and Ms. Macklin, that’s our business.”

  “It’s your wife’s business too. I’m surprised that you don’t wear your weddin’ ring at work, but that would bring about too much trouble if you did.” I stood up, looking eye to eye with Coach Johnson. “You’re right, we don’t need to have this conversation. Just think about what I said about wantin’ to play. I’d love to play this weekend, and it would overwhelm my heart if you would reconsider.”

  Coach Johnson didn’t say anything else to me, and my suspicions were confirmed. He was fucking Ms. Macklin behind his wife’s back. As far as I was concerned, everybody had skeletons. They were all preaching to me about doing the right things, and weren’t even doing the right things themselves. Technically, everyone in the school, and the school itself, disappointed me. Even Sabrina. Romeo and me pulled our train that night, and her good-girl status, through the eyes of many, had turned to ho status.

  Chapter 6

  I was back in the game that Coach said I wouldn’t be able to play in, and after that one, we were on our way to another winning streak. Ms. Macklin seemed real uptight in class, but she need not have worried because their secret was safe with me. I wasn’t thrilled about it, but, damn. She wasn’t giving me no play, and Raylo was mad as hell that she hadn’t called him. He wanted me to go to the strip club with him on Tuesday, in the hopes that I’d be able to hook something up. I kept telling that fool he had the wrong person, but there wasn’t a chance in hell that I was going to turn down going to a strip joint. I hadn’t made that kind of move yet, but Raylo told me that his friend worked the door and I’d have no problem getting in. I was all for it.

  Until then, after the game that day, I went home. While lying across my bed, I thought about what I was going to do for my eighteenth birthday. It was two days before Christmas, and for many years, I’d celebrated it with Romeo. Years ago, Mama stopped acknowledging it. She said there wasn’t no need, and that had gone for Christmas too. The only thing I was looking forward to was getting older and getting high. I was doing that throughout the year, but I had hoped to do something more interesting.

  Tuesday had arrived, and during Ms. Macklin’s class, I kept getting a visualization of her swinging on a pole and making her ass clap. I couldn’t help it; my dirty li’l mind needed a serious cleaning. I tried to finish my work, but it was hard to. Besides, Nadine’s belly was protruding a little. She for damn sure was pregnant. That distracted me as well, and if she was carrying my baby, there was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t have a job and I really wasn’t trying to be nobody’s daddy. I knew I had come inside of her numerous times, but I had hopes—very high hopes—that the baby belonged to that white boy.

  Romeo was talking about breaking into a house tonight, but I had other plans. According to him, his Uncle Joe, who he was selling weed for, knew a couple on the south side who had an unlocked safe in their basement. He claimed it was full of goods, but needed a couple of people to help him unload it. Any other time I was game, but I was looking forward to going to the strip club with Raylo. I told Romeo I’d catch up with him later, and I jetted home to take a nap so I could be well rested.

  Around 9:00 P.M., I woke up and changed into my sagging, well-pressed jeans, black Timberlands, and an oversized black button-down cargo shirt with pockets. My braids needed to be redone, so I tied a black scarf around my head, knotting it in the back. I put on my black jacket with fur around the collar, then sprayed on a hint of cologne. Afterward, I headed to the living room to catch up with Raylo. He was ready to go, dressed like a true pimp in an orange linen suit he’d gotten from Harold Pener, and cream and orange Stacy Adams shoes. His hair was slicked back and his rugged goatee was trimmed.

  “Well, well,” Mama said with a shocked look on her face. “Look at the two of you. I hope this party Raylo takin’ you to is legit. I don’t want to hear about a bunch of foolishness between y’all.”

  Raylo looked at me, knowing that he had lied to Mama about where we were going. “You ready?” he said.

  “Ready as I’m gon’ ever be.”

  Raylo gave Mama a kiss and we jetted. He drove his older model gray Cadillac, which had a slight lean to it. At first, inside of the car was pretty quiet, but when Raylo and me started sharing a joint, the conversation picked up. It seemed like we were driving for a long time. He hadn’t lied when he said that the strip club was on the other side of town. The roads were dark, and then, all of a sudden, lighted NAKED GIRLS signs were on display. The area got brighter and brighter, and when we finally made it there, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The parking lot was packed. Trucks, RVs, motorcycles, and a whole lot of cars were everywhere. This definitely wasn’t an all-black establishment, and there was no way in hell that Ms. Macklin would be found at a joint like this.

  Raylo took one last hit from the blunt and sipped from a pint of Hennessy. I drank from the Hennessy bottle too, and both of us were high as hell. As soon as we got to the door, a near-300-pound white bouncer with veins popping out of his neck stopped us. He looked into Raylo’s eyes and laughed.

  “What’s up, my nigga?” he said with a deep, strong voice, slapping Raylo’s hand. “Come on in.”

  I wasn’t feeling the white man calling Raylo a nigga, and the shit didn’t sit right with me. Raylo, however, gripped my shoulder, obviously seeing my tenseness. “Young blood here with me tonight,” he said. “Nigga, go find us a section in VIP.”

  They both laughed. Raylo and I followed the big dude. My eyes were popping out of their sockets. This was too much for a young man like me to witness, but I wasn’t complaining. My only complaint was the smell of wild ass, covered with sweet perfumes. Pussy was everywhere, though. Half-naked ladies were sashaying around, rubbing their bodies against men and women. The music was thumping loudly and the place was clouded with thick white smoke. White, blue, and yellow lights were spinning everywhere, and plenty of disco balls were turning. The bouncer sat Raylo and me in a purple leather circular booth that had lit candles all around to light up the area. Some of the other older men he knew were there, and Raylo continued to introduce me as his li’l nigga. I wished like hell that Romeo could have come with me. There was no way he would believe what my eyes were, indeed, witnessing.

  I could barely sit down before a Latina chick came into the VIP section, clapping her ass. She was working it hard, and the men were not only making it rain, hell, they were making it thunder! Money was being thrown everywhere, pouring down on her as she performed. I wanted to jump up and take some of that shit, but the Latina dancer’s performance was worth every penny. I sat there, speechless. My mouth was wide open and I was starting to drool. Raylo came over to me, and the Latina dancer followed. She was rubbing her ass against me, and I couldn’t believe when she sat on the table and pulled her g-string aside so I could see her hairless slit. Man did that shit look good. Raylo slapped his hand against my back, and he and his friends were laughing their asses off.

  “What you know ’bout that, young blood? You don’t know shit about that, nigga!” Obviously, I didn’t. The dancer started grinding on the table, rolling herself around and sticking her fingers inside of her coochie. I couldn’t believe when Raylo rubbed his finger against her stuff, and the more money he dropped on the table, the more aggressive she got. He smacked her ass, telling her to move on. She did, and he fell back on the booth next to me.

  “Man, man, man!” he yelled. “Why you sittin’
there lookin’ lost? I thought you were into this kind of shit.”

  “I . . . I am, but, damn! I didn’t know females be doin’ it like that.”

  Raylo handed me a stack of ones. There had to be at least two or three hundred dollars. “Relax and enjoy yourself. Get you somethin’ else to drink, and when another one of them bitches come over here, drop somethin’ heavy on ’em.”

  He slapped my back again, and walked away to talk with some of his friends. I slowly removed my jacket, still mesmerized by my surroundings. My eyes scanned the place. I had never in my life seen so many men with pure lust in their eyes. I was sure many of them were married, but they damn sure were there to have a good time. There was a long bar that stretched from one end of the club to the other. It was lit up with pink and white neon lights. Many rows of alcohol were behind it, and the glass mirrors viewed a spacious, marble-topped black dance floor, glistening as if it were covered in diamonds. The floor was surrounded with rails, but the floor was so big that no matter where you sat in the club, you could see the dancers. On the same floor were two circular staircases that led to the upper level. Two more dancers were on those, and, at the moment, a white chick with long black hair was doing her thing on the main floor. She was quite impressive, and I swore I ain’t never seen a white chick with an ass so big.

  “There go one of them whooties right there. That’s what we call them white gals with big asses,” Raylo said, turning to talk to me. “Lawd have mercy, would you look at that fat tail. I bet she got a gash that won’t quit.”

  He didn’t have to worry, because I was looking. I kept scanning the club, just in case I happened to see Ms. Macklin. Instead of seeing her, I did see someone I knew. I squinted, just to be sure. Directly across from us, but on the far side of the club, was my sperm donor. I couldn’t believe it! I had seen that fool on the streets, many times, but he rarely said anything to me. It didn’t bother me at all, simply because I hated his ass. I’d just seen him about two weeks ago, coming out of a liquor store on Goodfellow Boulevard. Mama made it clear that I was to never go anywhere near him. She also told me never to ask him for one dime. He’d been slinging dope for a long time, and everyone pretty much knew that his paper was stacked. Besides that, we looked a lot alike. He couldn’t deny me, even if he wanted to. Then again, yes, he could. I watched him from afar, dropping money as if it were going out of style. That money could have been given to Mama for child support, or, for that matter, what if I wanted to take my ass to college? He was sad, and I couldn’t believe that my blood was starting to boil just by looking at him. I couldn’t help it; that’s the kind of effect he had on me whenever I saw him.