Cartier Cartel

by Nisa Santiago

  ..Yo!"

  "Where you at?" she asked.

  "Don't you know how to address a nigga?" he responded with attitude. "Damn. You can't say hello? How was your day? The first fucking thing out your mouth is where you at."

  "Hello, motherfucker! Now, where the fuck you at?" she returned the attitude.

  Donnie chuckled. He had the streets of New York on lock, people feared him, and no matter what he said or did, he couldn't get his baby momma to walk with trepidation. She was the realest chick he ever fucked with and she was nice with her hands. If she wasn't pregnant with their second child, she would be the one throwing down on the Cartel tonight. One-on-one, he was sure she would have whipped their asses-all by herself.

  "I'm over here on Rockaway, scheming on this bitch, Bam. You know that bitch, right?"

  "Yeah, that little nappy-headed bitch who thinks she cute. She hangs with those other chicks who call themselves the Cartier Cartel, right?"

  "Yeah, that's her"

  "Now that we got that out of the way, why you scheming on her? What that mean?"

  "It means I'm about to give her a severe beat-down."

  "For real? What she do to you?"

  Donnie took another drag from his blunt and finally replied. "Those silly bitches out here taking away my customers."

  "They selling product? I thought they hustled the stores?"

  "They do all that good shit. But today is gonna be a bad day. I promise you that!"

  "Whatcha gonna do?"

  "Didn't I just say that I was gonna beat that bitch down!" Donnie barked, suddenly irritated.

  Ignoring his outburst, Pebbles replied, "You want me to come and whip her ass 'cause you know I will snatch that bitch bald. I will rip her fucking weave out of her head-'

  "Yo, calm down! You carrying my seed and you getting all hyped for no reason. I got this."

  After Donnie ended his call, it was time to handle business. With his gun tucked snugly in the back of his jeans, he crept up on Bam, who was oblivious to her surroundings. He wondered how she managed to not get knocked by Ds. She was totally unaware of her surroundings, and that was the first thing you learn when slinging drugs. If you didn't learn, you died.

  He was finally close enough that she couldn't ignore his presence. At first, she was hardly fazed by Donnie. That was until she took a deep look into his menacing eyes. She could smell his breath from a distance. Fear gripped Barn, but she was determined to put on a game face. There was no way she was letting down the Cartel. She was concerned about what Cartier would do if she backed down from Donnie, especially after Cartier had blatantly disrespected him. Barn decided not to go against the grain. She was Cartel, and Cartel didn't back down from shit.

  "Why you standing there looking all stupid-"

  Before she could complete her sentence, Donnie smashed her in the mouth with a solid left hook. Before she could fully process what happened, her left jaw was assaulted with a right punch. As Barn stumbled backward, Donnie grabbed her weave and held on tightly to keep her from falling. He wanted her face to sustain as many blows as possible and give her a beat-down she and her girls would remember. He put her in a headlock and began to pound the top of her head and face repeatedly while squeezing her neck tightly.

  Barn tried to scream and wiggle out of his embrace, but Donnie was too strong. In desperation, she tried to flail her arms and kick him, but to no avail. Soon her eyes were swollen shut, and her whole body felt numb. She was unaware of her surroundings. Donnie ripped her weave from her head, and it lay on the ground.

  When he was tired of using Bam as a punching bag, he reached around his back and pulled out his burner.

  Barn lay on the concrete sidewalk, knowing her life was over. She knew she wasn't ready to die. What had she lived for? What had she done with her life? She reasoned that everything she'd done up until that night wasn't worth her life. She was dying over a corner. How fair was that? The money, cars, clothes, and respect were all meaningless now. She thought about all the warnings her foster mother had given her and wished she could go back in time and heed her words.

  Donnie lifted Barn by what little hair she had left.

  "Please ... no!" Barn managed to scream before being silenced with the butt of Donnie's gun.

  With each hit, Barn's blood splattered everywhere. Once again, her battered body collapsed on the sidewalk, and her voice whimpered for Donnie to stop. Donnie wrapped his hand around her neck and picked her back up. The last blow to the middle of her face knocked out her once pearly white teeth and broke her nose, rendering Barn unconscious.

  Donnie looked down at his handiwork. The young girl lay in a pool of her own blood. Donnie stared at his blood-covered hands. If only they listened to me, he thought.

  Donnie turned to walk away and saw that he had an audience from the neighborhood standing around, gawking at the drug kingpin and his victim. They didn't see a drug hustler when they looked at Bam, only a young female beaten nearly to death by a drug dealer.

  "What the fuck y'all looking at?" Donnie screamed, challenging anyone to say something. "Anybody got a problem?"

  "That shit ain't right," one young lady mumbled under her breath.

  "What? What the fuck you say? Huh? I can't hear you!" Donnie pressed her, still hyped from the beating.

  The young lady walked away and once she was out of sight of the drug dealer, she called 911. She didn't know if the young girl was dead, but she knew she needed immediate attention. When the operator asked for her name, she hung up, satisfied that she had hopefully saved a life.

  t was almost midnight when Cartier was violently shaken awake by her mother.

  "Get dressed!" Trina cried out. "They done killed Barn, Cartier. They done killed Bam"

  "What? Who?" Cartier's heart began to thump. Her fingers trembled as she grabbed a pair of jeans and sweatshirt.

  "I don't know all that, just get dressed!" Trina snapped.

  "Where are we going?" Cartier asked.

  "Brookdale Hospital," Trina answered. "I already called a cab. We're gonna swing down the block and grab Monya and Janet"

  There was a million questions going through Cartier's head, but she knew better than to irritate her mother. The loud honking of the gypsy cab made Cartier more fearful. Visions of someone trying to rob Bam kept infiltrating her mind. Cartier knew something must have gone wrong while Barn was hugging the block. Guilt loomed over her head for coming up with the bright idea of each member handling a shift alone. It now seemed irresponsible and juvenile. If she had listened to Monya when she said it was a bad idea, maybe Bam would be alive.

  Janet, Monya, Lil Momma, and Shanine were downstairs and squeezed into the back seat of the cab, while Cartier and Trina tried to squeeze in the front seat.

  "Listen, y'all gotta pay extra for the additional passengers," the cabdriver announced.

  Everyone went berserk and began screaming at once. Stupid motherfuckers, faggots, bitches, and crabs flew throughout the cab, words the average New York cabbie heard once each week, if not once each day.

  "Get the fuck out!" he roared to the ladies.

  "We ain't going a motherfucking place," Trina roared back. "We got a murdered niece and you better take us to our damn destination!"

  "Y'all better get out or I'm taking y'all to the precinct!" the cabdriver replied, matching Trina's intensity.

  "I wish you would do some stupid shit like that," Janet threatened.

  The cabdriver huffed, and put the car in motion. The car erupted once again with a barrage of insults. Tuning out the ghetto-fabulous women, the cabdriver almost wished one of them was his lady. He would have given her a swift backhand in her smartass mouth.

  "I should come up in that front seat and punch you dead in your face!" Janet screamed.

  The cabdriver deduced this loudmouth was the alpha bitch in the crew. But the comment was the last one he was going to tolerate. He went ballistic. He didn't tolerate being spoken down to by anyone, and definitely not
by a female.

  "Bitch, I wish you would try it!" he challenged and hit the brakes, stopping the car abruptly.

  Again, the car erupted with insults. Trina fingered her blade that was tucked snugly in her back pocket, but decided against it. There was too much at stake. She motioned for Cartier to get out of the cab and everyone followed. As he pulled off, Cartier picked up a bottle and launched it at the cab, just missing the back window.

  "I'm so fucking heated right now," Cartier stated to no one in particular as they forged on. "Ma, what happened to Bam? Is she really dead?"

  "Cartier, I done told you I don't know any answers," Trina responded. "Black Gena from the building said the ambulance took her away and they said she was dead on the scene. That's why we're going to Brookdale to see what's up."

  They called another cab to take them to the hospital. This time each person sat quietly, wallowing in their own thoughts about Barn.

  Trina's mind was on Cartier. It could have been Cartier she was getting a call about. Cartier was her daughter, the one she tried to make hard as nails, the one she refused to raise properly, the daughter she let the streets raise for her.

  When they finally reached the hospital, Trina once again took charge.

  "Hi, my name is Trina Timmons and I'm here about my niece, Barn ... I mean, Bernice Jones. Her name is Bernice Jones. Was she admitted?"

  The young, exhausted receptionist hardly looked up to acknowledge Trina as she punched Bam's name into the computer. You could hear the tapping of each key as her extremely long fingernails hit the keyboard.

  "She's in the OR," the receptionist stated.

  "She's alive?" Trina asked, relieved.

  "Obviously," replied the unenthused receptionist.

  Trina couldn't resist a rebuttal. "What the fuck you say?"

  "Excuse me?" the receptionist asked with attitude.

  "Bitch, you heard me!" Trina screamed. "That's my niece you're talking about?"

  "And I told you what you wanted to know!"

  Trina's eyes grew small from anger. Her patience was consistently being tested tonight. "Where's your supervisor? I want to speak to your supervisor!" she demanded.

  "I am the supervisor," she replied, trying to minimize the situation. This would be her third complaint within the week.

  "Well, I want to speak to whoever's over you." Trina wasn't going to take the receptionist's word.

  "Ma, come on," Cartier begged. Trina was seven months pregnant and Cartier didn't want her to upset the baby. "Let it go. She ain't even worth it."

  Trina glared at her new enemy. "Bitch I'ma see you when this is all over!" Cartier pulled Trina's arm toward Bam's foster mother, Marianne. "Slap that smile off your face, stupid bitch," was Trina's last jab to the receptionist.

  It didn't take long for them to realize Marianne didn't have any answers. She knew Bam was admitted and rushed into the operating room with severe head trauma, but that was it.

  Marianne felt as if she had aged ten years as she paced up and down the waiting room. Bam was one of four foster children and the biggest headache of the four.

  Six years ago, Marianne had the brilliant idea to become a foster parent in order to save up enough money to buy a house. It was her get-out-ofthe-hood fast plan. The state paid $552 per child each month, and coupled with her own modest income, Marianne rationalized she'd be out the hood in no time. She thought she had devised a brilliant plan to save twenty-five hundred a month for two years. Since she had all girls, they could sleep in one bedroom with two bunk beds. Additionally, the rent, utilities, food, and clothing allowance were a drop in the bucket. That was six years ago and Marianne wasn't any closer to purchasing a house. Those girls had managed to drive her stress and blood pressure up, give her an ulcer and thinning hair, and push away each boyfriend she managed to snag.

  At that moment, she decided to send the girls back to foster care. Let them be the system's problem and not her problem. The foster care agency kept putting pressure on her to adopt the girls for good. All she had to do was sign her name on the dotted line. But Marianne just couldn't do it. She couldn't allow herself to be attached permanently to those juvenile delinquents. At thirty-seven, she had plans of getting married and having her own children. And none of the girls would be a role model to any of her children. She had tried to be a good foster mother and it didn't work. She could do bad all by herself. This was worse than having a worthless-ass man by her side.

  t was eight in the morning and Marianne had to call in and take a day off, a day she couldn't afford to take off. She could never go on vacation, because she'd used all her vacation days for crazy shit concerning her four delinquents. Whether it was talking to school principals, store managers and detectives, truant officers, or visiting hospitals in the middle of the damn night, she was always taking days. She could be sleeping in her warm bed right now, but instead she was standing inside a cold, dank hospital with a bunch of hooligans.

  A weary-eyed doctor in a white lab coat and clutching a surgical hat approached Marianne. "Ms. Jones?"

  Trina nudged Cartier, who had fallen asleep in the hard waiting-room chair. Everyone stood in anticipation of the news.

  "Yes," Marianne responded.

  "Your daughter's going to be fine," the doctor replied. "She's sustained severe head trauma, but once the swelling goes down, she should be somewhat all right. The parts of the brain that sustained the most injury were the cerebellum and brain stem that control motor skills and speech. With physical and speech therapy she should improve over time. She's stable and sedated. If all of you are family, you can go in to see her for five minutes. But realize she won't know you all are there.

  "Also, there are a couple of detectives who'd like to ask you a few questions"

  "But I don't know anything!" Marianne replied excitedly.

  "They still need to talk to you, ma'am. Goodnight."

  Everyone glanced at the two detectives. Out of respect, the detectives decided to wait until after the family saw Bam.

  The group filed into the room and was immediately aghast at the sight of Bam. She was hooked up to a couple of machines with tubes running in and out of her nose, mouth, and arms. Her head was bandaged and her left hand was in a cast. Her entire face was swollen to an unrecognizable state.

  Cartier, Monya, and Shanine burst into tears, while Lil Momma miraculously held it together. Trina and Janet embraced their daughters as Marianne held Bam's hand.

  An overwhelming force of emotions came flooding out as Marianne realized one of her girls was lying in that hospital bed. Bam had been her child for six years and she couldn't give up on her, no matter what her mind told her. Her heart couldn't listen, wouldn't listen. She wasn't raised that way. Family stuck with family.

  "Bernice, this is Mama." Marianne choked up. "You gotta be strong so I can get you out of this hospital, baby." Marianne was giving it her all to keep it together. "When you come home, I'm going to cook you your favorite dinner. You love my baked macaroni and cheese, don't you?"

  Tears streamed down Cartier's face. "Of course she does. And when you get better you can borrow my Xbox for as long as you want and I won't pester you to give it back."

  Theyhoped their words of encouragement somehow reached Bam. It was hard to see how she could hear them in her condition. And it was even harder to walk out of Bam's room and face two detectives who wanted answers.

  "Who did this to my baby?" Marianne asked them.

  "Well, ma'am, that's exactly what we wanted to ask you," the smaller of the two detectives replied. He was around five feet eight with a medium build, blond hair, and a thick mustache.

  "Ask me?" Marianne replied. "How should I know? Aren't you the cops?"

  "Yes, and we're doing our job," the second detective stated. He was the taller of the two detectives by several inches. His portly belly had seen its share of Budweiser and Miller, and nothing light. "We've already been on the block and tried questioning a few leads, but everyone claims they d
idn't see anything. We were hoping you could tell us who had a vendetta against Bernice.

  Marianne looked toward her friends. "You know parents are the last to know if their child has trouble. You need to ask her friends."

  Each girl had only one name in their minds: Donnie. He was their trouble with a capital T. He had warned them. He was the only one who would benefit from hurting Bam.

  Neither girl spoke a word about their rival, because of the code of the streets: Don't Snitch.

  "Do any of you girls know who would do this to your friend?" the lead detective asked.

  Each girl either shook her head or shrugged her shoulders.

  "If you're protecting someone, then sooner or later we're going to find out," the detective said.

  "There's no one to protect, because we don't know nothing," Cartier answered.

  "And your name is?"

  "Cartier"

  "Cartier what?" the second detective asked.

  "That's enough, Officer," Trina intervened. "My daughter hasn't done anything, and I'm not going to allow you to interrogate her as if she's the bad guy. You need to go out and find out who hurt Bernice."

  "And why don't you let us do our job?" The lead detective stepped toward Trina. He was short on patience and had an obvious disdain for the present company.

  Trina looked to Cartier and her friends, while Janet grabbed Monya.

  "Marianne, we'll wait for you over here," Trina said. "You know these girls don't know nothing."

  The detectives asked Marianne a few more questions, handed her a business card and left. As everyone began to leave the floor, a registered nurse named Kathleen came from around the corner and approached Marianne. The nurse had been watching the events unfold from afar and she was certain that the coast was clear. She didn't want to get Barn in trouble after the ordeal she had gone through.

  "Ms. Jones?" the nurse stepped forward.

  "Yes," Marianne replied.

  "These are your daughter's clothes," the nurse said as she passed a plastic bag of bloody clothes to Marianne. "We had to cut them off her, but I think you'll know what to do with what's inside."