Memoirs of an Accidental Hustler

by J. M. Benjamin

  “Damn, he home, huh?” Mal shook his head.

  “Yup,” I replied.

  “Where he said he was staying?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “I hope that muthafucka don’t try to get in touch with moms,” Mal spat.

  I was thinking the same thing. “You know she’s not messin’ with him like that,” I assured my brother. “She has too much going on for herself to be goin’ backward.”

  “Yeah, no doubt. Moms got her shit together. The last thing she needs is his ass in her life. I wonder if she knows he’s home,” Mal said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, we gonna wait here until he comes back and hear what he’s gotta say. If he said he heard about us while he was locked up then he knows we getting money. He might wanna get hit off on the strength that he’s our pops, but we don’t owe him shit,” Mal barked. “Everything we got we got it on our own.”

  I could tell my brother was angry. Out of all of us, he had taken the situation with our parents the hardest. I would always say how he had hated my dad for breaking our mother’s heart.

  “Let’s just see what’s up with him and see what he wants.” I tried to calm my brother.

  “Yeah, let’s just see,” Mal repeated.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  “I see you got good taste like your momma. Who all lives here?”

  “Me, Mil, my girl, and my daughter.”

  “Daughter? You mean to tell me that I’m a grandfather?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Mal said.

  “You got a daughter, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Last time I checked I was still your father, ain’t I?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that makes me a granddad, wise guy, how old is she?”

  “She just turned one this past July.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Kafisa.”

  “Where’d that come from?”

  “Her moms and her family are Muslim.”

  “Oh. What about you? You got any kids running around?”

  “Nah, not me.”

  “What, you shootin’ blanks or something?”

  Mal chuckled at the joke.

  “Yeah, okay, keep thinking that.”

  For some reason it seemed natural to be bugging out with our father. I wasn’t mad at him anymore.

  When we got inside, Keya and Kafisa were asleep.

  “You want something to drink?”

  “What you got?”

  “Heineken, gin, vodka, Hennessy, orange juice, cranberry juice, soda, spring water.”

  He smiled. “Man, where’s your bar at?”

  “Mil, you want a beer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You two guys are something else, I tell ya,” he said as he looked at the pictures we had in the living room of us and the family. “Man, your mother and them are looking good. Your sisters are all grown up now, huh? I know you two had to crack a lot of heads over the years.”

  We both laughed. “We stopped counting,” I said.

  “You tell them I’m home yet?”

  “Nah. Nique’s in Florida visiting somebody, and Jasmine’s off at college.”

  “College? Wow, my baby girl made it to college, huh?”

  “Yeah, my moms and grandmother stayed on her the whole time,” Mal said, not wanting my dad to take any credit for it.

  My dad picked right up on it. “Absolutely,” he said. “What about you two?”

  “Nah, I got my high school diploma down the Dale,” I told him.

  “I stopped going my senior year, and so did Nique,” Mal said.

  “At least you got some type of education, no thanks to me.”

  I was surprised to hear him take the blame for our limited education.

  “Anyways, I wanted to talk to you two about something.”

  “What’s that?” we both asked.

  “About what y’all into. I been hearin’ this and that and how y’all got it going on and all this mess, and I blame myself for leaving you out here like that, but I’m home now and I know y’all been out there for a while, but this junk has got to stop.”

  We looked at each other, making sure we both heard what we thought we did. Mal spoke before I could. “What?”

  “Y’all been out here long enough to have put up enough money to where you can just walk away from the game before it’s too late. It’s time to stop the nonsense now.”

  “Hold up! You been gone for fourteen years and my moms had to struggle with four kids, and we been on our own since ’88, and you gonna try to come home and lay some law down? Nah, don’t try to come home and be no father now. It’s too late for all of that!”

  I stood there listening as Mal screamed on my pops, and then I looked at my dad. I could see the hurt in his face, like my brother had just slapped him as hard as he could with a dose of reality. I almost felt sorry for him, but then I didn’t because Kamal was right. It was too late to try to come home and play the daddy role. We were not babies anymore. We were grown, and we called our own shots.

  For a while, he said nothing, and then he looked at me for some type of confirmation to see whether I felt the same way as Kamal did. My look confirmed it all. He turned around and began to walk toward the door.

  “Damn, kid, you ain’t have to rip him like that,” I said to my brother as my dad made his exit.

  “Man, fuck that. This nigga think he gonna just come up in our shit and start calling some shots. It ain’t happenin’. I don’t feel guilty about nothing I said ’cause that shit is true and he knows it.”

  “Yo, I’m wit’ you on all of that, I’m just sayin’ you could’ve said the same thing but a different way, that’s all.”

  “It came out like I meant it to come out.”

  “All right, Mal. I’m gonna go catch him and drop him off wherever he needs to go. I’ll be back.”

  “Whatever, kid. I ain’t beat for that bullshit.”

  * * *

  “Yo, Dad, hold up.”

  He stopped.

  “You ain’t gotta walk. We said we’d make sure we dropped you off where you needed to go.”

  He got in the truck.

  “Where you stayin’?”

  “Out in Linden.”

  “With who?”

  “Carol.”

  “That’s your woman?”

  He smiled. “That’s my lady friend, like I told you before.”

  “Oh, I got you; I got a few lady friends myself.”

  “I’m sure you do,” he said, laughing.

  “Look, Dad, what Mal said back there at the house, how he said it was probably a little messed up, but he was right.”

  “You ain’t gotta make no excuses for your brother; he’s his own man.”

  “I ain’t trying to make no excuses. I’m just tellin’ you.”

  “I know, and I know he’s right. If somebody would’ve rolled up on me and ya uncle Jerry like that, father, grandfather, whoever, it would’ve been a problem. I knew it would be hard because I knew the two of you were spitting images of me, and that’s what kills me the most, ’cause I know how I am. I wasn’t tryin’ to change you; I was tryin’ to save you. I just don’t want y’all turning out like how I did. You been locked up before so you know what it feels like. But them little years you did ain’t nothing compared to what you could be looking at if you don’t slow your roll. Y’all gonna have to learn the hard way like I did,” my father ended.

  “I guess so.”

  “Turn right here. See where the Volvo is? Right there.”

  I took a pen out and wrote how he could get in touch with us if he wanted to. “This right here is our home number, this is my truck cell phone, and my regular cell number, and these are Mal’s. Use ’em if you want, whenever.”

  “I will.”

  I reached in my pocket. “Here, take this.” I handed him everything I had on me. It was about two grand.

  He hesitated for
a second and then he took it. “Thanks, son. Tell your brother that I still love him, and I love you too.”

  “I will and the same.” I couldn’t bring myself to say it because it just didn’t sit right wit’ me, but I knew that somewhere inside I still had love for him, and I wanted my dad in my life.

  As he got out, he turned and said, “Let your sisters know that I’m home.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said, and then I peeled off.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  It had been almost eight months since we had last seen or heard from our father. A lot had gone on since that day when he first came home. Mu had gotten sentenced to twenty-five years in federal prison a week before his thirtieth birthday on February 4, 1995. Mal and I flew down on his sentencing date and hit his baby moms with enough dough to hold him, her, and their baby down for a few years.

  Speaking of baby, I got Tonya pregnant. She was two months, and I got a next chick pregnant who I met at a party. She was a month. I wasn’t ready to be a father, but neither one of them wanted to get an abortion, so there was nothing that I could do.

  Keya and Mal broke up because she caught him cheating for the tenth and last time. He had a new girl and a new baby on the way as well, so Keya was beefing over that. She had been acting funny when it came to him seeing his daughter. Shareef got cased up again, but not for drugs, for a shooting charge. He was at the club and got into a fight the one night Mal and I didn’t go with him, and when he got outside, I heard they tried to jump him, but he made it to his car and reached his burner. Between the weed and the Henny in his system, they said that he was wilding out and shot niggas. Instead of them keepin’ it gangsta, the niggas pressed charges on some punk shit, so he was facing three attempted murders. Mal and I had been trying to get at these niggas to keep them from going to court and testifying because the police never found the guns; they were only going by what they said.

  Me and Mal basically controlled the projects. 80 percent of the cash flow coming through was coming to us, and the other 20 percent everybody else was fighting for. We had stepped it up and started pumping dope and weed with the coke and crack we were already moving. Our little team of niggas was twelve strong, but they were going in and out of the youth house, getting knocked from the projects being so hot this year.

  “Hello? Which one of my sons am I speaking to?” I heard my father’s voice say.

  “Hey, what’s up, Dad? This Kamil.”

  “Yeah, what’s up, kiddo?”

  “I’m all right. Where you at?”

  “I’m just getting off the exit to come to town.”

  “Where you been?”

  “I been down South. Me and Carol moved down there six months ago and brought a double-wide trailer down in South Carolina.”

  “South Carolina? What you doin’ way down there?”

  “I’ll talk to you when I get there. Meet me at your house; I should be there within the next twenty minutes or so.”

  When we looked out the window to see who was blowing the horn, we saw our dad stepping out of a brand new pickup with a camper on the back.

  “What the fuck Dad drivin’?” Mal said, as we both laughed. He was leaning on the truck when we got outside.

  “What’s up, knuckleheads?”

  “What’s going on, old man?” I said back.

  “Ha, yeah, right. I bet this old man can take your young behind on any given Sunday.”

  I laughed back.

  “What made you move all the way down South?” Mal asked him.

  “A couple of reasons. For one, Carol has family down there; two, it’s nice and quiet, and respectful, too, not like up this way. Third, ’cause the money’s good down there.”

  “Oh, you got a job down there?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I wish,” he said in a funny sort of way. “They don’t pay you nothing down there because the cost of living is cheaper than it is up here.”

  “So what you mean the money is good?”

  “I’m talking about Southern street money.”

  Me and Mal couldn’t believe our ears.

  “Don’t look surprised. Where you think you get it from?”

  “You got back in the game, Dad?” I asked.

  “I was never out of the game, son. Those fourteen years I pulled in the joint was all still a part of the game. How you think I got this truck and trailer? The brothers in the South are real hustlers and ballers. They get that big money down there. I’m just down there moving a few ounces here and there. I’m not even going hard like I know I could ’cause I’m too old for that. That’s why I came to talk to you two.”

  “About what?”

  “About leaving them hot-ass projects alone and coming down South with me and making yourselves some real money.”

  “We already makin’ real money,” Mal said.

  “Man, that ain’t no real money you makin’. That hundred to two hundred grand y’all putting up ain’t nothing. The money y’all done made in seven years up here, you can make in seven months down there if you know what you doin’. It’s just a matter of time before they snatch your butts up for messin’ with them projects, if they ain’t already planning to run down on you now. I pay six hundred a ounce in New York and take it back to South Carolina and bust it down and make nothing under twenty-five hundred, and I’m buying four and five ounces a whop.”

  We had impressed looks on our faces.

  “But that ain’t what I want y’all to come down and do. I want y’all to come and sell weight.”

  “What?” Mal said.

  “Yeah, sell weight. Bring New York to them; that’s where the money’s at. I mean you only gonna get double or something not even that, but the money is in the quick flip, you follow me?”

  “We listening,” we both said.

  “Say you cop two bricks for twenty-one thousand dollars apiece and sell them for twenty-eight thousand dollars apiece right off the back, that’s a fourteen thousand dollar profit right there; or say you come and sell ounces to the younger kids wholesale twelve hundred an ounce, or a thousand, if you sell thirty-six ounces a G a whop, that’s thirty-six thousand dollars. If you sell them for eleven or twelve hundred, that’s forty-three thousand dollars a key. That’s what the quick flip is about.”

  The way my pops broke it down sounded good, but we had never hustled in the South or, for that matter, anywhere else other than the projects so we didn’t know what to believe. Mal didn’t sound like he was interested, but I was willing to check it out.

  “Dad, that sounds cool and all, but we good where we at and how things are going, right, Mil?” Mal said.

  “Yeah, you right, but what Dad was talking about sounds like somethin’, and you know the PJ’s are on fire right now.”

  “Yo, we don’t know nothin’ about no South, kid, and look what happened to Mu.”

  “Mu got set up, Mal; up until then he was killing ’em down there.”

  “Who’s Mu?” my father asked.

  “You may remember him. He’s from around here. His name is Mustafa.”

  My father had a puzzled look on his face at the mention of Mustafa’s real name. “Maybe by face.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But, look, why don’t one of you come back down with me and take somethin’ with you and see what happens? The worst that can happen is that you don’t sell nothin’, right?”

  Mal looked at me. “You gonna go?”

  “I’ll go see what’s up.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’ll go. I need to get away ’cause this baby shit got me a li’l stressed,” I said.

  “What baby stuff?” my pops interrupted.

  “You jinxed him last time we saw you, ’cause he got two girls pregnant and they’re a month apart.”

  “You still goin’ up in them girls raw? You better be worried about catching the AIDS instead of who you got pregnant because that’s the number one killer for our people right now.”

  “I do be strapping up, sometimes, but them t
hings be bustin’, and they take away from the sex.”

  “Yeah, well when sex takes you away you won’t have anything to worry about.”

  “He don’t be using condoms anyway. He probably don’t even know what a condom looks like,” Mal said, laughing.

  “You don’t either; that’s why you don’t know who burned you last week.”

  We all started laughing.

  “Listen, enough of the joking. I’m leaving in two days, so do what you gotta do and I’ll be back to you then.”

  “Dad?” Mal called out to my father right before he was about to leave. “I didn’t mean everything the way it came out.”

  “I know, son.”

  * * *

  The day Mal went to pick up, I had him cop an extra nine ounces for me to take down South. If I was going to be staying for five days, I figured that should hold me.

  “Yo, watch yourself while you down there, and if things ain’t looking right catch a flight back home, because we ain’t got time to be playing no games. Dad might be exaggerating anyway.”

  My pops came to pick me up.

  “Keep me posted on what’s going on. I got things covered up here.”

  “All right, I’ll hit you when we touch down.”

  * * *

  WELCOME TO SOUTH OF THE BORDER, the sign read. We had been driving for over nine hours and still had about an hour and a half to go. I stayed in the back of the camper, drinking, eating, and sleeping the whole time. My pops tried to get me to drive some of the way, but I wasn’t trying to hear it; besides, I started to feel the pint of Hennessy and it knocked me out.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead, we’re here.”

  I hopped out of the back of the camper, and sitting right there was a big trailer home.

  “Welcome to my domain,” my pops said.

  It was laid out and real clean. I was properly introduced to Carol and then she cooked for my dad and me after we took showers. When we finished eating, we got in Carol’s Volvo and hit the area. Either everyone knew my father or they were just extra friendly, because every time we rode past somebody, they waved.

  My father said it was a little bit of both. We went to all these different houses and projects and he introduced me to all different old men and women. Even though I didn’t talk business with anybody, I knew these people had to be the heavy hitters in the town. What I noticed was that my pops didn’t talk to or introduce me to nobody around my age. After we hit the areas and spots, he told me that we should hear something by tonight. The South game was definitely different than up top.