Wrath

by K'wan

  “What you doing perched in that window like a pigeon?” Janette startled him. He hadn’t heard her approach.

  “Nothing.” Jonas got out of the window and closed it.

  “I need you to run up to Juan’s and get me a pack of cigarettes and a box of cereal,” she told him.

  “Okay, give me the money.”

  “I ain’t got it right now, but tell him I’ll set him right when I get my stamps tomorrow.”

  Jonas frowned. “You know I hate asking him for anything.”

  “You ain’t asking. I am. Now stop giving me lip and do like I said. And make sure you come right back. If I have to come looking for you, it’s gonna be trouble,” she warned.

  “Whatever,” Jonas mumbled under his breath and went to get his coat. When he got outside, he filled his lungs with the fresh air. The sun shone down so brightly that he had to squint. He was like a man recently freed, and it felt good.

  When Jonas got inside the store, it was crowded as usual. It was the end of the month, so people whose food stamps had run out were there bartering with Juan to get something to hold them over until the first rolled around. Juan’s brother, José, was behind the counter ringing up some chips and a juice for a young man. José looked like a younger, chunkier version of Juan. José was cool. He didn’t bother anybody and would sometimes cut people a break even after his brother had refused to do so. José was also heavy into sports. He was one of the few people with whom Jonas could have serious conversations with about football. He was an Eagles fan, while Jonas rode out with the Giants, so they often engaged in heated debates.

  “What’s up, Raf?” José greeted him when he noticed the boy walk in.

  “Chilling.”

  “Yo, what do you think about the upcoming draft? I think we’re finally going to get a quarterback that can take us back to the playoffs,” José said.

  “You might, but you still gotta get by us, and we know that ain’t happening,” Jonas replied. “But, yo, I need a solid.”

  José knew what he meant. He waited until he had finished with the boy making the purchase before waving Jonas over. “What you need?”

  “A box of cereal and some smokes. My mom will make it right when she gets her stamps,” Jonas promised.

  “You know I’m not worried about it. Grab what you need off the shelf, but you’re going to have to see my brother about the cigarettes. You know that cheap bastard counts every single loosie that moves out of here. He’s in the back.”

  When Jonas saw José, he had hoped he’d be able to avoid Juan. “A’ight.” He walked toward the back of the store.

  Juan was leaning against the ATM, drinking a Corona and whispering sweetly to a young girl named Jewels. Jewels was Fat Moe’s niece. Jonas had been seeing Jewels around the neighborhood off and on for years, but she had only recently moved there permanently. She and her mom had gotten evicted from their apartment in the Bronx, and they were staying with Fat Moe until she got back on her feet. Jewels was what you would call a wild girl. It seemed like every other week she was getting into a fight. To the other girls in the neighborhood, she was still an outsider, and they were always testing her. One thing Jonas liked about her was, win or lose, she never backed down. She would knuckle up with anyone.

  Juan was in the process of trying to convince Jewels to take a sip of his beer when he spotted Jonas standing in the aisle. Briefly, a guilty expression crossed his face, but it was quickly replaced by a sly smile that was mostly teeth and gums. Jonas hated that smile. It reminded him of a snake about to swallow up an unsuspecting field mouse. “What’s up, li’l Zeke?”

  “Jonas,” he corrected him. He hated when people called him li’l Zeke, and Juan knew it, which is why he did it. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure thing, kid.” Juan whispered something to Jewels, which made her giggle, before dismissing her.

  “Hey, Raf,” Jewels greeted him on the way out.

  “Sup?” Jonas said in an uninterested tone. He wanted to get his mother’s cigarettes and get back upstairs before she came outside looking for him and acting a fool.

  “So, you going to Ricky’s house party this Sat? I hear his parents are going to be out of town,” Jewels informed him.

  “I might slide through,” Jonas lied. He knew damn well his mother wasn’t going to let him outside to attend a party.

  “Maybe I’ll see you there?”

  “Maybe,” Jonas said without bothering to look at her.

  “Okay then,” she said awkwardly before leaving.

  “Why are you always so mean to that girl? You know she likes you, right?” Juan asked.

  “Whatever,” Jonas said. He knew Jewels liked him, but Jonas only had eyes for Alex. “My mom needs a pack of cigarettes. She’ll pay it back when she gets her stamps.”

  “You know she’s already into me for fifty bucks from the beginning of the month when I looked out for her,” Juan told him.

  “So, should I tell her you can’t do it?”

  Juan thought about the question as if he were genuinely struggling with the decision. “Nah, I’ll look out for her this one last time. Janette has always been all right with me. Tell José I said you’re good.”

  “Thanks, I’ll make sure her tab gets settled,” Jonas said as if he had two nickels to rub together.

  “I know your mom is a busy woman, so if she doesn’t have time to stop by, she can send it by Yvette,” Juan said. Jonas knew what he was suggesting, and Juan knew that he knew, but Jonas didn’t allow the man to bait him.

  By the time Jonas left the store, he had the box of cereal and cigarettes his mother sent him for and a soda for himself. He wasn’t even thirsty; he just felt like taking a little extra from Juan’s smug ass. He was about to go back to his building when he spotted Ace and Cal coming up the block. The mischievous smirks on their faces said that they were up to no good, which meant he was right on time. It had been awhile since Jonas got into some mischief with his friends.

  “I see they finally let you off lockdown,” Ace started in on him.

  “What y’all fools into?” Jonas didn’t take the bait.

  “About to get into some gangsta shit,” Cal said, smiling slyly.

  “What you talking about?” Jonas asked curiously. Cal looked to Ace, who gave him the nod to spill the beans about whatever it was that they were up to.

  “A’ight, but not here. Come around the corner.” Cal started off without waiting to see if Jonas was following.

  When they got around the corner, the three of them huddled in the doorway of one of the buildings. Cal kept looking up and down the street as if he were about to reveal some secret treasure, and he was. From the pocket of his baggy jeans, he produced a .38. The gun was old and partially rusted, but it was still the most beautiful thing Jonas had ever seen.

  “Yo, where’d you get it?” Jonas asked excitedly. He reached out to touch the gun, but Cal tucked it back into his pocket.

  “Where do you think I got it? From my brother,” Cal told him.

  “Didn’t you learn your lesson from the last ass whipping you got for taking his shit?” Jonas asked.

  “I’ll have this back before he even notices it’s missing. I only need it for a few hours,” Cal said.

  “What do you need it for?” Jonas wanted to know.

  “To rob a muthafucka, what else?” Ace asked as if the answer should have been obvious. “We’re gonna go downtown to like Eighty-something Street and place an order from the Chinese restaurant. We’ll tell them we’re having a dinner party and to bring change for a hundred. When they show up, we’re gonna take the food and the money. This shit’ll be easy. You down?”

  Jonas was hesitant. He and his crew were no strangers to taking things that didn’t belong to them, but that was mostly limited to stealing bikes or shoplifting. What Ace was suggesting was armed robbery, which was way out of their league.

  “I don’t know, man,” Jonas said cautiously. “What if something goes wron
g?”

  “Ain’t shit gonna go wrong. When the delivery guy sees this pistol, he’s gonna give up his shit without a hassle. My brother and them do this all the time,” Cal said as if it were just that simple.

  “This nigga is scared,” Ace said.

  “Ain’t nobody scared,” Jonas told him.

  “Then prove it and roll with us,” Ace challenged. “You ain’t even gotta do nothing. Just watch our backs while me and Cal get him.”

  Jonas had a bad feeling about it. He wanted no part of the armed heist his friends were plotting, but he didn’t want to seem like a punk either. There was a serious debate going on between the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other. The angel ended up losing. “Fuck it. I’m in.”

  “That’s my boy!” Ace slapped him proudly on the back.

  Jonas and his crew started making their way toward the 2-train station on 135th and Lenox. They had barely made it out of the neighborhood, and his heart was already in his throat. He knew what they were about to do was not only wrong but dangerous too. Still, he had already committed and couldn’t back out. They were just about to descend the steps into the subway station when the universe intervened on his behalf.

  “And where do you think you’re going?” a voice called from behind Jonas. He turned around to find Sweets coming out of the Schomburg Library, but she wasn’t alone. Drew was with her.

  “Nowhere,” Jonas lied. “Mom sent me to the store, and I was just on my way back to the block.”

  “Good, because I’m going that way, so we can walk together.” Sweets saw through his bullshit.

  Jonas looked from his waiting sister to his friends, who were eager to go and pull off their heist. He knew that no amount of bullshit he tried to feed Sweets would help him to escape now that she was on him. “I’ll catch up with y’all another time,” he told his boys.

  “Sucker-ass nigga,” Ace teased before heading down the stairs with Cal.

  Jonas, Sweets, and Drew walked back up Lenox toward their block. Drew and Sweets shot the breeze, but Jonas was quiet. He was still pissed at Sweets for blocking his action. In his mind, he imagined all the things that he could’ve bought with his share of the robbery money. They stopped at the pharmacy on 136th so Sweets could get some feminine products for her and her sisters. She went inside, leaving Jonas and Drew to wait.

  “You can’t dance on every record,” Drew said to Jonas once Sweets was out of earshot.

  “Huh?”

  “The move you were about to bust,” Drew clarified.

  “What makes you think I was about to bust a move?” Jonas asked.

  “A man is often judged by the company he keeps,” Drew said, sounding older than his 17 years.

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I know how your boys give it up,” Drew told him. “Ace is out here playing, and you look like you’re still on the fence about getting into the game.”

  “What are you, psychic or something?” Jonas asked sarcastically.

  “Nah, I was just your age once. I know how loud the streets can whisper into the ear of a young man trying to come up. I can’t tell you what to do, but what I can tell you is that unless you’re ready to go all in, ride the bench for a time longer.”

  “How long did you ride the bench before you started hustling for Eight-Ball?” Jonas shot back.

  “I don’t hustle for Eight-Ball. I buy drugs from him,” Drew corrected him.

  “Still sounds like a worker to me,” Jonas called himself being cute.

  Drew laughed. “Spoken just like a spectator to this here sport. Let me break something down to you, shorty. When I first started out, I was moving product for Eight-Ball, but when I got my weight up, I was able to buy my own package. Now I ain’t gonna lie. I cop exclusively from Eight-Ball and kick him a little something every month for the privilege to hustle on his strip, but all I sell is all I keep. I sling when I want; I don’t punch nobody’s clock, like the rest of these dudes.”

  “How did you manage that?” Jonas asked. He had always been under the impression that everybody who sold drugs on the strip worked for Eight-Ball.

  Drew thought about it before answering. “When I started hustling, I asked myself if I wanted to be a worker or a boss and took the necessary steps. Which role do you see yourself in?”

  “A boss,” Jonas said confidently.

  “Then you need to put yourself in position to be that. The first thing a boss understands is not to follow anybody else blindly, kind of like what you do with Ace.”

  “I don’t follow Ace; I just hold him down when he needs me to,” Jonas told him.

  “I dig it, and I respect it, but at some point, you’re going to have to ask yourself: Do I gain more by being loyal to a team, or having a team be loyal to me? You might not understand that right now, but in time, you’re going to thank me for that jewel.”

  For the rest of the walk home, Jonas pondered what Drew had run down to him. His words gave him plenty of food for thought. Ace was usually the one that came up with the plans, but did that qualify him to be the leader of their team? Food for thought, indeed. When they reached the building, Sweets sent Jonas upstairs with the items his mother had sent him to the store for and the bag full of feminine products. She stayed outside with Drew, telling him she’d be along in a few. From the way they were looking at each other, it would probably be longer than that. Something was definitely going on between the hustler and his sister. Jonas was just too young to understand what.

  As Jonas sat in the window of his apartment watching the world pass him by and thinking about what he would miss out on from not rolling with Ace, he found himself bitter. He was pissed at Sweets for stopping him from going with his friends, but little did he know at the time, later on, he would be thankful that she had. It would be two days before Jonas would see Ace again and find out that his fears about the robbery had come to fruition. Ace had promised that the robbery would be simple, but things had gone terribly wrong. Instead of the Chinese delivery guy giving up his goods as Cal had predicted, he put up a fight. He ended up taking the gun from the kids and kicking both their asses. Ace got away, but the delivery guy held Cal until the police arrived. Getting arrested for the robbery was bad enough, but the fact that the gun had a body on it made things worse. Cal was the first of Jonas’s friends that had to go away to do some time . . . but he wouldn’t be the last.

  Chapter Seven

  By the time spring reared its head, Janette had loosened the yoke around Jonas’s neck. He was allowed to ease back into some of his regular routines. She still managed to harass him about his whereabouts when she was sober enough to do so, but for the most part, she left him alone.

  Things had changed quite a bit between the time Cal was sent away and Jonas being able to come outside regularly again. For one thing, their original crew of three had become four. Ace, in Jonas’s absence, had started running around with a kid from 145th Street named Prince. Jonas knew Prince from school. He was a quiet Jamaican kid that Jonas had taken a liking to. The kids used to give him shit because his parents always made him wear slacks and shoes to school instead of jeans and sneakers like the other kids. They were devout Jehovah’s Witnesses. Jonas was surprised to see Prince playing the block as much as he did because he knew how strict his parents were. Ace had given him a taste of the streets, and his nose was now wide open. Jonas liked Prince. He was a cool dude once you got to know him. It was the fourth member of their group, Mula, who gave him pause.

  Mula was the youngest of their crew, but he had been in the streets longer than Jonas or Ace. He was barely a hundred pounds soaking wet but had a heart that could be measured in metric tons. His uncle, Fish, ran with the Red-T Boys, and Mula was always trailing behind him when they did dirt. He was like their unofficial mascot. Mula was down to do whatever, whenever, to whoever and loved to play the front lines when it went down. He was young, so the few times he did get arrested for things, he only received a sla
p on the wrist. He acted like his age gave him a license to break the law, which he did quite well. Once, Mula had gone into an appliance store and came running out with a microwave. It didn’t matter to him that it was broad daylight. Mula was reckless like that. There was a rumor that Mula already had a body under his belt, but he would never confirm or deny it.

  Something else that had changed was that Ace was now dealing. He had hooked in with someone that Doug knew, and they fronted him some weed. It was only a few ounces and not even the highest grade of weed, but it was a start. The young boys were growing up.

  Jonas was supposed to meet up with Ace, Mula, and Prince at 3:00 p.m., so they could catch the 3:45 movie at the Magic Johnson Theater. It was already 3:15, and he was just getting out of the shower. He was running behind schedule because Sweets had sent him to the drugstore to get some children’s Tylenol. Jo-Jo had been complaining about her legs aching again. The older she got, the more her legs seemed to trouble her. They had taken her to the Harlem hospital to see what was wrong, but they couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary. They gave her an appointment to come back so that they could run some labs, but, of course, her mother had missed it. They just dosed her up with Tylenol and hoped for the best.

  When Jonas went into his room to put his clothes on, he was surprised to find Slick there. His back was to the door, and he was fishing around under the bed for something, so he didn’t notice Jonas walk in. “You lose something?”

  Slick jumped like a man who had just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He looked a mess, more so than usual. He had been wearing the same clothes for days, his hair hadn’t been combed, and he could stand a shave and a bath. Even though he was an addict, Slick had always done a pretty good job at keeping up his appearance, but lately, he seemed to be letting himself go.

  “Yeah, I was looking for my wallet,” Slick lied.

  “Why would your wallet be under my bed?” Jonas asked suspiciously.