Down by Law

by Ni-Ni Simone

  “You must be tryna get cussed out.” I looked him over from his high-top fade to the cinnamon freckles speckled across his face. “Yo’ red behind smoked the last of my weed. Is you crazy?” I shook my head. “You know what? The next time you bust up in here it’s gon’ be a problem for you.”

  He smiled and his front gold tooth gleamed. I looked over at Yvette and her face was lit up like a Christmas tree.

  Face winked at Yvette and said, “I came to check on you two. Make sure you was all good.”

  A smile bloomed across my face. “Shiiiiiiiiiiiit.” I walked over to Face, slapped him five on the black hand side, and then flicked my nose in pride. “I’m surprised Queenie didn’t wait for you to come back before she left. So she could brag about how my work was decent. Yvette put a lock in Aiesha’s head and I left the white meat of her cheek flappin’.”

  “Word.” Yvette grinned, sitting down next to Face as I sat down in my throne chair. She carried on, “We let that herb know we ain’t the ones. Betchu won’t none of ’em come for us again.”

  “I betchu they won’t either,” Face said, walkin’ over to the boom box and admirin’ it. “This is ill. Where you get it from?”

  “We jacked it.” Yvette twirled one of her braids.

  Face smiled. “From who?”

  “Who you think?” Yvette said sweetly. “Aiesha. The broad we left bleeding in the street.”

  “That’s wassup.” He balanced the equalizer.

  “Faaaaaaace,” Yvette whined. “We got some candy. You want some?” She held up the pack of Pop Rocks and candy cigarettes we’d just stolen. I sucked my teeth. Truthfully, I couldn’t understand what Yvette saw in Face. All I knew was that whenever he came around, she’d turned into a real ding-a-ling dumb and love-struck clown. Straight stupid. No respect for us being play cousins. And she didn’t seem to notice that all Face offered her was a smile. She still pushed up on him.

  I yanked the candy outta her hands and rolled my eyes. “Psych.” I sat back down. “Yvette, you better stop playin’. You wanna give him somethin’? Give him them jelly bracelets, them earrings, or that name ring you got on.” I turned back to Face. “And anyway, I got a bone to pick witchu.”

  “Wassup?” He turned away from the boom box and leaned against the window sill.

  “’Ey, why of all the D-boys you can have slangin’ for you, you got some Down South fools out there?”

  Face looked at me like I was crazy. “What? Down South? Whatchu talkin’ ’bout? You already know I don’t get down like that.”

  “Well, then you got a problem. ’Cause when me and Yvette was walking back from the store, the one on the corner of Jeliff and Muhammad Ali, in front of the town houses, was straight boomin’. Them boys was servin’ all kinda fools.”

  Face frowned and his whole face wrinkled. “You sure? They was out there slangin’?”

  I smirked at him and arched a brow.

  “The corner of Jeliff? In front of the town houses?”

  “Yup.”

  “How many was out there clockin’?”

  I looked over at Yvette. “It was about five, six?”

  Yvette nodded her head. “Yeah, about six.”

  “How you know they was from Down South?”

  “’Cause one of ’em tried to kick it to me,” I said. “He served a fiend, then looked up and was like, ‘’Ey, yo, you lookin’ ripe, shawty, how old is you? Fifteen?’ ”

  The veins in Face’s neck thumped, but he never raised his voice. That’s how I knew he was madder than hell. “And what you say?” he asked.

  I smiled and said, “‘Yeah. I’m fifteen.’ Then me and Yvette kept on walkin’.”

  Face nodded. His hazel eyes danced with pissed-off thoughts. “A’ight. A’ight. A’ight. Good lookin’ out. I’ma head out. I need to see wassup.”

  I did my best to push away my giggles and I knew Yvette was doing the same thing. But once Face broke out the room, I walked over to Yvette and both of us fell across my bed and cracked up. “Yooooooo,” Yvette said. “He was mad!”

  “Hell yeah. You can’t set up shop on somebody’s block. Nah. Fools get killed for less than that. And you know Face gon’ handle ’em.”

  “I wish I could watch.”

  “Me too.” I grinned. “I know one thing though. I can’t wait to get to school on Monday.”

  “Me either.”

  “’Cause er’body gon’ be talking about two things: us bum-rushin’ Aiesha and Ninety-five South goin’ home in garbage bags.”

  5

  It’s like a jungle sometimes

  Ten p.m.

  The moment Daddy did a drunk strut past my room with the lingering scent of lavender and stale Thunderbird trailing behind him, I knew the spot was ’bout to blow up. So I sprang to my feet and followed him.

  Daddy rushed into he and Queenie’s bedroom and slammed the door behind him. I squatted, leaned into the peephole, and watched the action unfold.

  Queenie lay back on their bed, with a coffee-colored knee-high on her head. She was dressed in a beige half a slip and a black lace bra, and she held a thin brown cigarette in the corner of her lips as she watched TV.

  “Where you go this afternoon, Queenie? Huh?!” Daddy walked over to the TV and turned it off. “Answer me! You didn’t ask me if you could go anywhere!” Daddy unbuckled his brown leather belt and snatched it off.

  Queenie eased the cigarette from between her lips and blew a cloud of smoke toward him. “Last I checked, I was grown. Now what you can do is wash off that stankin’ perfume and sleep off that Thunderbird. Or you can carry yo’ raggedy ass back to building 272 and play daddy to the two lil baldheaded bastards you think nobody knows about. Now I’m warnin’ you. ’Cause tonight”—she shook her index finger at him—“is not yo’ night.”

  “You think you better than me?! Huh? You think you can just do what you wanna do around here?” Daddy moved in closer to her.

  “You better get yo’ drunk behind somewhere and sit down!” Queenie grabbed onto the edge of the bed, where she kept the knife tucked under the mattress, but before she could reach it, Daddy reared the belt back, and sent her tumbling to the floor. “You don’t ever tell me what to do!” He took a step back and stumbled into the dresser.

  Queenie picked herself up. The hem of her slip was torn and hanging and her bra straps draped off her shoulders. She licked the bloody corner of her swollen bottom lip, carefully slid a blade from between her teeth, and sailed it down the side of Daddy’s face.

  My heart stopped.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  “Whatchu doin’?” Schooly said from behind my back, scarin’ me. “Pops and Queenie already told you about bustin’ into they room. You gon’ get in trouble.”

  I spun around. “She just sliced his face! Don’t you hear them in there fightin’! You wasn’t sleepin’ that hard.”

  Schooly shrugged. “So? And? What I care if he got his face sliced. Maybe he deserved it.”

  I wanted to steal on Schooly and lay a fist right in his jaw for sayin’ somethin’ stupid like that. “You sound so dumb!”

  “I’m not dumb! I’m smart. I’m smart enough to know that when I turn eighteen, I’ma get a good job, and then me and Queenie will be outta here!”

  “Why we gotta wait that long? You and Queenie can roll right now—”

  “What the hell y’all doin’?!” Queenie snatched the door open and her left eye looked like purple and black rolls of neck fat. The nastiness made me squint.

  Schooly took off. But I didn’t. I slid to the left of Queenie and peeked back into she and Daddy’s bedroom. Daddy was bent over at the waist and holding a blood-soaked towel up to his face.

  “Daddy!” I said in a panic. “You okay?”

  Before he could answer, Queenie stepped completely into the hallway and pulled the door shut. “Take your behind back to the bed!” she said and then swished toward the bathroom.

  I followed her. Leaned against the door frame and wa
tched her look at herself in the medicine cabinet’s mirror. She inspected the flamin’-red belt-buckle marks beat into her right cheek. Then she lifted her gaze and stared at my reflection. I knew then we was thinking the same thing: she was crazy.

  Queenie reached in the medicine cabinet and pulled out a bottle of peroxide. She shuffled a few bottles of Tylenol around before sucking her teeth and pushing past me. “Schooly!” She walked to my brothers’ room and peeked over Face’s empty bed at Schooly’s. She frowned and shook her head. “Schooly!”

  This sucker was stretched out and snoring, like he wasn’t just talkin’ smack to me, less than five minutes ago.

  “Boy, you ain’t asleep. Get up. I need you to go to the store for me!” Queenie grabbed the end of his sheet and yanked it.

  Schooly yawned, stretched, and slowly peeled his eyes open. Both me and Queenie rolled our eyes to the ceiling. The only difference was Queenie lowered her gaze and smiled at Schooly while I ice grilled him.

  “Listen, baby,” Queenie said in a soft tone. “Mama needs you to go to the store for her and get some gauze and tape so I can patch up your daddy.” She turned to me. “Isis, go get my purse off the kitchen table.”

  I did as she said and quickly returned. She handed Schooly five dollars. “And get me an ice-cold Pepsi. ’Cause my nerves is shot.”

  Schooly didn’t move; instead, he lay there, obviously soaking in every one of Queenie’s bruises.

  Queenie turned away. “Boy, what did I tell you to do!” she said, walking out his bedroom door.

  He hopped up in a huff. Tryna play it off like he was mad about being sent to the store, when I could clearly see that he was mad about how Queenie looked.

  “And come right back! And don’t get in no trouble,” Queenie yelled behind him as he stormed out the front door.

  “Can I ask you somethin’?” I said, as Queenie walked toward her bedroom.

  She spun around, her eyes was loaded with a million thoughts. “What?”

  “Ain’t you tired of Daddy beatin’ on you? ’Cause I know I am.”

  Silence.

  I continued, “You know what I think?” I tapped my foot, anxious for her to say yes.

  She didn’t answer. But I could tell by the way she lifted her good eye that she wanted to know, so I continued on. “I think if you stopped doin’ things without askin’ him and learned to be quiet sometimes, Daddy won’t have to get mad and you won’t have to cut ’im.”

  Queenie stared at me so long and hard that I knew she was about to beat me down. I took a step back. Prepared to take off runnin’ and never stop.

  Instead of her gunnin’ for my life or snatchin’ me by the throat, she placed a hand up on her hip and said, “How about if you shut your mouth. Stay out of me and my man’s affairs, and stay in a child’s place. Now getcho fresh behind outta my face before you find yourself wakin’ up dead and buried in the middle of next week!”

  6

  Ain’t no half steppin’

  The next afternoon

  “You better getcho behind outta my face before you wake up dead and buried in the middle of next week!”

  “Yooooooo, she said that?” Yvette’s eyes bugged and danced in delight, as if she admired the way Queenie had played me.

  “Yup. Ain’t she trippin’?” I tossed into the air, just to see if Yvette would agree or not, ’cause if she was my best friend and for-real play cousin, then she would be on my side. But if she wasn’t . . . I was gon’ gut her like a fish.

  Her face wrinkled. “Heck yeah, she trippin’. Hard.”

  I smiled and bopped my head to the music. Somebody’s black Maxima, which was parked half on the street and half on the sidewalk, pumped Tenor Saw’s “Pumpkin Belly.”

  Me and Yvette was sittin’ in the middle of the courtyard, on the top of a concrete park bench, and across from Face and his boy Ke’Ron.

  Ke’Ron, who the streets called K-Rock. ’Cause he boxed and when he threw a jab his opponents always said it felt like he had a bolder in his hands.

  K-Rock who I secretly loved.

  And dreamed loved me back.

  And wanted to marry me.

  And have pretty babies with me.

  Who I thought looked just like the caramel version of Michael Jackson, the one on the Thriller album. Minus the Jheri curl and the Tinkerbell voice.

  K-Rock was the color of apple butter. Scratch that. He was the color of the sweetest apple butter. His almond-shaped eyes was a sparkling marble brown. His hair was a low Caesar with a thousand spinning waves, and his gear was fresh to def. Er’day. All day.

  I think he was seventeen.

  But I wasn’t exactly sure.

  He slang with Face on the weekends, but during the week K-Rock went to school, something we all found out last year that Face didn’t do. Queenie cried and slapped him when she realized he’d dropped out. But who could blame Face? It’s not like he was stupid, but he was seventeen in the ninth grade. So he left and never went back. Shortly after that, Queenie and Daddy said he was a man.

  And now he ran things. I just wished he would run his friend over here to me.

  I looked over at Yvette and she was staring at Face just as hard as I’d been staring at K-Rock. A few seconds later, Yvette looked at me and we both bust out laughin’, knowin’ that in our thoughts we was brides-to-be, which is why I said, “We should have a double wedding.”

  Yvette’s face lit up. “Word. That would be the bomb. And you know who we could have sing at our wedding?”

  “Who?”

  “New Edition.”

  “Ohhhhhh my Goooooood! Yes! And we could have my daddy walk us both down the aisle.”

  “I would love that. And just so you know, I’m not wearing white. I’ma wear pink ’cause that’s my favorite color.”

  “Eww, you gon’ look like a skeezer too. You gotta wear white ’cause that’s what brides do.”

  “Bride?” came from behind us. “Who gettin’ married?” That was my girl Grier, who we called Munch ’cause she stayed having the munchies. And she didn’t even smoke weed that much. She just liked to eat.

  “What up, Munch?!” me and Yvette said simultaneously, looking over at the girl standing next her, immediately sizing her up. She was short. About five feet even, thin, with a bra full of boobs, and white. Like for-real white. Not extremely high yellow. Not albino. Not mulatto. Not Mexican. White. Pale peach-colored skin. Icy gray eyes. Dark brown silky hair that she pulled back in a ponytail. She wasn’t a white fiend that roamed or hoed around here. And she looked too young to be five-oh. So clearly she was in the wrong hood.

  “Who dis?” Yvette asked, curling her top lip.

  “Took the question outta my mouth.” I popped my lips.

  The white girl wiggled her neck. “My name is Catherine.”

  Me and Yvette’s mouths dropped open. Catherine looked straight up like Brooke Shields but, sounded as if her name should’ve been Shonda. Or Lisa. Or Myeesha.

  “This is my foster sister,” Munch said, shoving a hand full of Crunchy Cheez Doodles in her mouth. “Told you my cousin Shake and his wife was foster parents. Catherine came to live with us yesterday. She cool.”

  “A’ight.” I smiled and said, “If you cool with Munch, then good with us.”

  “Yup,” Yvette agreed.

  “So, Catherine, you can chill wit’ us when we go to school on Monday,” I said. “We call our crew the Get Fresh Clique. The all-girl version of the Get Fresh Crew. And just so you know Doug E. Fresh is my husband.”

  “You like Doug E. Fresh?” She smiled. “That’s my man. Step off.”

  I tried to not laugh but failed, and a small giggle slipped out. “Whatever. You better go check for one of the Beastie Boys, ’cause I had Doug E. first.”

  Catherine did her all to look tough but couldn’t hold it up. “You can have him.” She grinned and snapped her fingers. “I been diggin’ this lil dude named Too $hort anyway. He’s from Cali and he is everything and more.�
��

  I laughed. “You been to Cali?”

  “Yeah. I used to live there with my father.”

  “What part?” My eyes opened wide. I was hoping she was going to say Hollywood.

  “Oakland.”

  I felt deflated. “Word?”

  “Yup.”

  I hesitated; then, as if a light bulb had gone off, I said, “I got it. We gon’ call you Cali. ’Cause that’s cute and that’s where you from. Catherine sounds like a nun or somebody’s great-grandmama. Let the teachers call you Catherine, but your peoplez gon’ call you Cali.”

  Cali stood quiet for a moment, chewing the corner of her thin bottom lip. “Cali . . . Cali . . . ummm, I like that.”

  “That’s stupid fresh, yo,” Munch said.

  Cali’s eyes beamed in pride. “Yeah. That is dope.”

  I continued, “Now, Cali, how you get to Brick City?”

  “My dad died. And my mother lived in Bloomfield, New Jersey, with her boyfriend. So I had to live with them.”

  “Why you don’t live with them now?” Yvette asked.

  Cali whispered, “She put me out.”

  “How old are you?” I had to ask.

  “Thirteen.”

  “And she put you out?” I asked in disbelief. “What, you slept with her man or somethin’?”

  “No.” Cali shook her head. “He slept with me.”

  We all fell silent, knowing exactly what that meant. I wanted to ask more questions. But we’d just met this chick and I didn’t need her buggin’ out ’cause I was all in her business.

  “Yooooooo,” Munch said, breaking up the awkward silence. “Ain’t that Flip?” She pointed.

  I curled my top lip. “Yeah, with his nasty butt. Always tryna talk to girls our age knowing he twenty-eight.”

  “He a fiend?” Munch asked.

  “Yup,” I added, watching Flip and Face give each other a loaded fist bump. “He be over there coppin’ all the time.”