by K'wan
Chucky knew without a shadow of a doubt that Wolf was going to kill him. Through his bloody and swollen eye he spotted a police car creeping on the Avenue. In a last-ditch attempt to save his life, he broke away from Wolf and ran for the police car.
“Help, he’s trying to kill me!” Chucky yelled, throwing himself on the hood of the police car.
The officers got out to attend to the wounded man, just as Wolf came up the block in pursuit of him. When they saw the gun in his hand, they drew theirs. “Drop the weapon!” one of the cops shouted.
“Take it easy,” Wolf said, lowering his gun to the ground slowly. The cops moved in and began roughly handcuffing him. “You’re making a mistake, I’m on the job,” he tried to explain.
The cops took one look at his braids, gold teeth, and sweat suit and laughed. “Yeah, right and I’m the fucking queen of England,” one of them said, throwing Wolf against the car to pat him down. They found the gun he had stolen from Chucky and a large bag of weed. After securing Wolf, the cops turned around to check on the injured man, but he was long gone.
CHAPTER 31
By the time Persia got back to Letti’s place, it was nearly midnight. After the phone conversations with Sarah, her mother, and then Richard she was numb. She rode the bus in such a daze that she had missed her stop twice. When she dragged herself into Letti’s house all she wanted to do was smoke and cry.
Malcolm was in his usual spot, perched by the window, staring out scheming. He cut a glance at Persia then went back to his scheming. Letti was sitting at the table loading a glass pipe with rocks. Once she had it packed, she put it too her lips to light, but hesitated when she saw Persia.
“Damn, looks like you just lost your best friend,” Letti joked.
“I did,” Persia said.
“Oh, my goodness, I’m sorry, Persia. I didn’t know,” Letti said, feeling embarrassed.
“I know you didn’t.” Persia shuffled to the couch and sat down beside Letti. “I need something to take this pain away. You got anything, Letti?”
“I ain’t got no weed. I’m waiting on Chucky to bring that back. But I got some hard white. You’re welcome to it, if you don’t mind getting your fix like the common folks this time.” She extended the pipe to Persia.
Persia stared at the pipe for a while. She had never smoked crack without weed, and surely never out of a pipe. She always told herself that so long as she never put her lips to the pipe she couldn’t technically be considered a smoker and wasn’t too far gone. With the way she was feeling, her principles went out of the window. She wouldn’t have cared if she had to smoke out of a fishbowl, as long as she had something to take the pain away.
Persia took the pipe and held it between her lips while Letti lit it for her. The glass pipe fogged with smoke, and Persia sucked it clear like the good little junkie she was turning into. After taking her first official hit, she lay back on the couch, waiting for the cannons and whistling of birds.
From his perch by the window, Malcolm snickered. “Welcome to rock bottom, baby girl. Now pass that shit.”
Chucky had never thought he’d be so happy to see that raggedy church on Letti’s block. The snow had really started coming down and the whole street was white. He had barely made it out of Harlem with his life, thanks to detective Wolf. Chucky looked at his eye in the rearview mirror. It was bruised, and cut from where Wolf had hit him with the gun. Chucky fumed thinking about the ass whipping he had just taken. Wolf was a cop, but he had laid hands on Chucky so he would’ve have to go; it was Chucky’s rule.
What the beating did tell Chucky was that it was finally time to go. He was still strapped for cash, but he had enough money and enough coke to float him for a while, thanks to Pharaoh. After escaping Wolf, Chucky went to the block. He found one of the naïve new dudes that Omega had on the block and convinced him to let him take a shit on one of the stash houses. The boy let Chucky in and waited for Chucky in the hallway, which was a mistake. Chucky stole ten G-packs of crack, which would net him $10,000, and escaped out the window and down the fire escape. A part of him felt bad about double-crossing Ramses, but he reasoned that he wasn’t stealing from Ramses directly; the drugs belonged to Pharaoh. He knew when Ramses found out, he would have the kid killed and send a death squad looking for Chucky, but he was a man on the run anyway, so what did one more pursuer mean to him? Besides, nobody knew where Chucky was laying his head those days, and by the time they figured it out he would be long gone. All he had to do was go to his aunt’s to pick up his stash, and grab Persia, and they were getting on the road that night.
As he normally did, he rode past his aunt’s house twice, with his lights off, before parking. He had just made his second sweep and was about to turn into the driveway when something moving in the shadows caught his eyes. There were two men creeping through the bushes, around to the back door of the house.
His heart leapt in his throat. It was impossible! There was no way Ramses could’ve found him that quick, unless someone had double-crossed him. And if he had been double-crossed, it could’ve only been by someone in that house. If that was the case, he would leave them to whatever fate was coming their way. He thought of Persia, sitting inside and oblivious to the shadow of death closing in. Her life was supposed to be his, but someone was going to steal his glory. There wasn’t much he could’ve done about it. Wolf had taken his gun and left him defenseless. For as much as he wanted to be the end of her, he wasn’t ready to die to sate his thirst for revenge. With his headlights off, Chucky rode off into the night and left Persia to the wolves.
Persia was in the upstairs bathroom splashing water on her face, when she heard the cannons. This time it wasn’t the cannons in her ears from a crack hit, it was the sounds of guns being fired.
She opened the bathroom door, which opened to one of the bedrooms, where there was a couple on the bed shooting heroin. They were so far into their nod that they seemed oblivious to the sounds of panic coming from downstairs. Persia heard the gunshot again. This time it was closer. She tiptoed to the bedroom door and peeked out into the hall. Malcolm was running up the stairs like he had the devil on his heels. He had just cleared the top landing when the back of his head shot off and decorated the ceiling. It was then that Persia saw them.
There were two men wearing masks. One was tall, carrying a sawed-off shotgun and the other short, holding a black 9 mm. There was something about the way the shorter man moved that rang familiar to Persia, but her brain was racing too fast to understand why. When she saw them coming toward the bedroom, she ran in the bathroom and locked the door.
Persia stood with her back pressed to the bathroom door, sweating profusely. A cold chill settled in her bones and her stomach kept lurching as if she was going to vomit. She was going to be sick, but that was the least of her concerns at the moment. Snot dripped from her runny nose, onto her bare feet, but she dared not remove herself from the bathroom door to get a tissue from the sink, so she wiped it with the back of her hand. If her mother could see her doing it, she would surely be on her back about how it wasn’t ladylike, but Persia’s mind wasn’t on etiquette, it was on survival.
Outside the door she could hear voices, one high-pitched and pleading and the other low and cruel. There were the sounds of struggling, followed by the unmistakable retort of a gunshot. She had to clamp her hand over her mouth to keep the scream that had just leapt from her throat from escaping. She tried to be as quiet as possible, but her heart was beating so hard in her chest that she could hear it in her ears and wondered if they could hear it on the other side of the door too.
Persia wasn’t sure how long she had been pressed against that door, but it seemed like forever. She listened intently for the sounds of voices or footsteps, but heard none. All was silent. Persia let out a deep sigh of relief, knowing she had once again dodged a bullet. Still leaning on the door, she looked up at the wreck staring back at her from the bathroom mirror. It made her want to cry, but she wasn’t sure if she had a
ny tears left. Even if she did, who still cared enough to wipe them? She decided that after that night, she was getting her shit together.
Someone jiggled the bathroom door and her breath caught in her throat. They had found her! Persia thought maybe if she just explained to them that she didn’t have anything to do with what was going on they would let her go, but then she thought of Malcolm and his brains on the ceiling. There was no way she was going to die in a crack house. She looked around the bathroom frantically for something she could use for a weapon, when her eyes landed on the window. If she could climb down the side of the house, she might be able to get away. She was three stories up and it was snowing, but her chances out there were better than her chances in the bathroom.
Persia had just managed to work the old window open when the bathroom door came crashing in. The two masked men filed in, guns drawn. When the shorter one saw Persia, he paused and that was all the time she needed to slide out the window.
“Bring your li’l ass here,” she heard one of the men say. A hand clamped around her leg and was trying to pull her back in.
“Let me go. I didn’t do anything.” Persia began kicking and thrashing.
“Stop fighting and come back in here,” the shorter one ordered, trying to get a better grip on Persia by grabbing her shirt.
Persia could feel herself sliding back through the window. If they got her inside, she was dead. With her last bit of strength, she kicked out as hard as she could. Her feet made contact with the shorter one’s face. The force tore her shirt, but she was free from his grip. Persia tried to grab on to the storm drain on the side of the house, but it was slick with snow and she slipped.
Persia felt like she was falling forever. The wind felt good, like it was caressing her tenderly. For a few seconds all was right with the world and she was wrapped in her mother’s love. That came to a crashing halt when Persia hit the ground and it felt like she broke every bone in her body.
She lay there, in too much pain to move, watching the snowflakes fall across the glare of the dirty yellow streetlight. It made them look like pretty yellow diamonds. She wanted to reach up and grab a handful, but her arms didn’t seem to work anymore. As she lay there, feeling her life drain away, she thought about her mother and how she’d treated her. She wished she’d understood that all Persia wanted was a little love and one grand adventure. Persia would’ve given anything to be able to hug her one more time and tell her that she loved her and wished that she had been a better daughter, but she would never have the chance. She also thought of Chucky, and how he hadn’t been there to save her from this horrible fate. She wondered if he would cry when he found out what happened. There was so much that they still hadn’t had a chance to do. Tears of regret began to roll down Persia’s face. She didn’t want to die alone in the snow.
The bells of the church rang loudly. It was midnight . . . her eighteenth birthday.
She began to weep heavily and sang. “‘Happy birthday to me . . . happy birthday to me . . . happy birthday, dear Persia . . .’” Her words trailed off as the darkness claimed her and ended her adventure.
EPILOGUE
Persia awoke in a white room. It smelled sterile and clean. She squinted her eyes against the glaring light shining down over her and made out the form of someone dressed in all white.
“Am I in heaven? Are you an angel?” Persia asked groggily.
“No, you’re in a hospital and I’m a doctor,” the tall blond woman in the lab coat told her. “Do you know who you are?”
“Yes, my name is Persia Chandler.”
“That’s a good sign. You took quite a blow to the head. All your neuro tests came back negative, but we just wanted to make sure there wasn’t any lingering damage,” the doctor explained.
Persia took stock of herself for the first time. Her head was bandaged, and right arm and legs were in casts. “What happened? How did I get here?” Persia had a million questions.
“Well, we were hoping you could tell us. About three days ago someone brought you to the emergency room. You had taken a serious fall and for a minute we weren’t sure if you were going to make it. If that guy hadn’t brought you in when he did you would’ve probably died from internal bleeding.”
“Who brought me in? I’d like to thank them,” Persia said.
“He didn’t leave a name. He waited until we had stabilized you then vanished.”
Persia wondered if it had been Chucky who rescued her, but if so why would he leave? Persia went to try to sit up and realized that her left arm was strapped to the bed. “What’s this all about?”
“It’s just a precaution, Ms. Chandler. When your blood work came back there were heavy amounts of marijuana as well as crack cocaine. Can you tell me how long you’ve been an addict?” the doctor asked. She wasn’t trying to be insulting; it was a routine question.
“I ain’t no damn drug addict!” Persia said indignantly.
“Well, your blood work says otherwise,” the doctor countered. “But it isn’t my place to judge. The restraint is for your own safety. You’re going to find yourself suffering from withdrawal and it may not be pretty. The restraint is so that you don’t try to hurt yourself. We can give you something to help take the edge off while you’re going through the withdrawal.”
“No,” Persia said. “No drugs. If it isn’t aspirin, I don’t want it.”
“It could get pretty rough, Ms. Chandler,” the doctor warned.
“Can’t be any rougher than the last month of my life has been.”
The doctor shrugged. “Your choice. Now if you’re up to it, there are some people who would like to see you. They’ve been here around the clock since you were brought in. I’ll send them in and give you some privacy.” The doctor left.
Persia lay there wondering who could’ve been coming to see her. She was surprised when her mother, Richard, and Sarah walked in. She was so happy to see her mother that she started crying.
“It’s okay, I’m here now.” Michelle hugged her daughter, careful not to hurt her damaged body. “Mommy is here.”
“I’m so sorry for the way I treated you,” Persia sobbed.
“That’s the past, let it stay there. Right now we have to focus on getting you well. Richard has contacted a private facility upstate. They have a school program so you can study for your GED while you’re getting treatment,” Michelle told her.
“Mom, thank you for everything, but I don’t to go to some rehab center like a junkie and I don’t want a GED. I want to go home and go back to school like a normal teenager.”
“But the doctor said the withdrawal process is rough. Persia, let’s at least go check the place out before you make any rash decisions.”
“No, she’s right,” Richard spoke up. “Persia has been through a lot. She doesn’t need to be around strangers, she needs around people who love her. If that’s what she’s decided, that’s what we’re going to do. We’ll beat this thing together . . . as a family.”
It felt good hearing Richard stick up for her. She had said some nasty things while she was under the influence, but she knew Richard just wanted the best for her. “Thank you, and I’m sorry for what I said.”
“I know, Persia. Don’t worry about it. Like your mom said, let the past stay where it is. I’m going to go talk to the doctor to see if we can sign you out and take you home.” Richard started for the door, but Persia stopped him.
“Richard, you were right about what you said.”
“And what’s that, Persia?”
She thought of Chucky and the things he’d showed her during their time together. “A cold world does breed hard men.”
The doctor had been telling the truth: going cold turkey was harder than Persia had imagined it would be. For days she was racked with cramps and fits of vomiting. It was like she had a flu that wouldn’t go away. There were times when Persia felt like she was going to die, but her mother and Richard were always right there to help her through it.
Afte
r a few weeks Persia was well enough to go back to school. There was no way her mother was letting her go back to King after all that had happened. Richard pulled some strings and got Persia back into St. Mary’s. She had a lot to catch up on and would probably have to pick up some night school classes to catch up, but she was up to the challenge. Persia had a whole new appreciation for life and wanted to make the best out of the second chance she was given.
One day she and Sarah were in her bedroom doing their homework, when Persia’s bedroom phone rang. It was a new number that not many people outside of Sarah had, so she wondered who it could be.
“Hello?” Persia answered.
“Hey, baby.” Chucky’s voice came over the other end.
Persia turned her back so that Sarah couldn’t see the expression on her face. “How did you get this number?”
“You know you belong to me and I belong to you, so I’ll always be able to get a hold of you when I need you, and I need you now,” Chucky told her.
“Chucky, you left me for dead in that house. You didn’t even come see me while I was in the hospital,” Persia said emotionally.
“It wasn’t my fault, baby. Look, just come meet me and I’ll explain everything to you,” Chucky said.
“I can’t,” Persia told him, but she didn’t sound sure.
“Oh, so now that you’re back on your feet, you’re too good for me? That’s fucked up,” Chucky said, faking hurt.
“It’s not like that, Chucky. It’s just that I’m trying to get my life in order and I don’t need any distractions,” Persia explained.
“Damn, I’ve been reduced to a distraction? That’s cold, Persia. When you came to me for help I risked my freedom and took you in, but now you’re gonna turn your back on me? Don’t do me like this, baby. It’s a matter of life and death. I’m begging you, just meet me and hear me out.”