by Love Belvin
Don’t fuck with me on this…
“Hello?” His thick cords vibrated over the phone as I jogged across campus.
“Ilk!” I trilled. “You sleep?”
“Tori?”
“Yeah.” I shifted right to avoid a weird male human skateboarding up the walkway.
“What you think?” Raj grumbled.
Not having a lot of time, I cut to the chase. “I need a huge favor.”
“Name it.” The swiftness of his acquiesce had always warmed me to Ragee McKinnon. He was the kindest person I knew. Smart, too.
“I’m flying home for a funeral—”
“When? Who?” His thick tone was alarmed.
“I’m sorry to worry you, big head. No one you or I know, but someone close to a…” I hesitated. “…friend of mine.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow—”
“Tomorrow, Tori?”
I stopped jogging, eyes bouncing wildly. “It’s an emergency, Raj. I’ll explain everything to you, but for right now, I need to get to the funeral.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s on Friday in Newark at…” I tried recalling the name Dre gave me. “…the second largest church in the city.” My brain hiccupped again. I was so worked up at the news when Dre mentioned Ashton finding out so late, I hardly listened to much else. “Ummmmm… Something with a C. Calvary, or something?”
Ragee McKinnon was a church boy. If the church had a choir, he’d know it. And what church didn’t have a choir?
“Mt. Calvary?”
“Yes!” Excitement sparked in my belly. “That’s it.”
He groaned. “What time?”
Relieved, I resumed my jog. “I’ll be landing in Newark tomorrow at 6:55…”
Sitting in the second pew of the church, eyes stinging and swollen, heart numb, and body bone-chilled, I watched my family standing over the open casket delivering gut-wrenching sobs. It was the end of the service and the funeral home director explained once the casket was closed for pre-service viewing, it would not be opened again. However, my family being as forceful as we can be, demanded it was opened after the eulogy.
That was a big mistake and I knew it, which was why I remained here alone while three rows of family and friends were huddled over the casket. I knew after seeing his body privately last night at the funeral home, I didn’t want that image of him engraved in my mind. Brick was in a suit. The nigga hated suits. He didn’t even wear one to his prom or the weddings of family members we’d gone to over the years.
He wore his gang colors everywhere, even down to his boxers and socks. That was the only thing his mother, who was my aunt, and my mother, who’d paid for the funeral and repass, allowed. His underclothes—something I didn’t know was a staple in funeral culture—were the colors of his gang. But his suit was a classic navy blue, shoes were a dope cognac, and dress shirt was a crisp white opened at the neck. Brick wouldn’t approve, but he wouldn’t be mad either.
When I lifted from picking up my money and the dice, I peeped him lighting up a spiff. We were in the stairwell of my mother’s luxury apartment building, shooting dice.
I scoffed, rolling my eyes. “You gone get our asses beat, bruh!
He took a heavy pull, eyes shrinking, then pushed it toward me for the offer. I shook my head, declining.
Brick chuckled. “Yeah. I’m still scared of Aunt Wanda, yo. Straight up. She’ll beat my muthafuckin’ ass.” He let out the ganga-infused smoke. “Just like she did when she caught those twins in your room, running a train on yo ass!”
We both curled in laughter. The reminder of the shoe my mother chased my fourteen year old ass around her apartment with tickled the hell out of me in the moment.
“Yo,” I tried to slow my laughter. “When I finally decided I had to let her catch me…” Laughter choked my words. “That chic beat my ass with that shoe in more ways than I knew possible!”
We rolled against the wall for support, cracking the hell up. I was damn near drunk from the bottle of Yak we’d just drained, and I was sure Brick was, too. It was the night after Christmas and I was home from school on a break. Eventually, Brick pulled a few more while I enjoyed the quiet of my tipsy brain. That was until the damn smoke detector sounded. Right away, we tried fanning off the alarm. I pulled my white tee from over my head and waved it toward the ceiling, where the small device flashed. That was dumb. We wasted precious getaway time trying to quiet a piece of systematic equipment.
“Stay right there!” the new security yelled from a lower level inside the stairwell.
“Fuck!” I threw my t-shirt back on as I made my way to the steps, taking three at a time, hauling ass upstairs.
“Oh, shit!” Brick was behind me laughing.
I didn’t find shit funny about being found smoking weed in my mother’s apartment building. It was not a rundown centurion-old structure you found in the slums of Newark. Nah. This was gentrification money and security. UMNDJ Doctors, lawyers, professors, and the like type of living. I ate up four flights of stairs before I thought to leave the stairwell. Brick’s stupid ass was still laughing behind me. I looked over my shoulder while power-walking to the elevator. The blunt bounced between his lips while he pulled up his coat.
I’d be damned if another security guard didn’t appear behind Brick from the stairwell we’d just come from.
“Fuck!” I swore again, kicking off a sprint.
The elevator doors were just closing when I made it there and stuck my hand inside to open it again. Thankfully, Brick was on my ass and slipped in. I beat the close button begging for it to work and fast. Just as the security made it in the frame of the elevator door, he stumbled over his feet and feel on his face. Brick laughed his ass off at the guy. As the doors closed, I watched him pull out his walkie-talkie, alerting his partner of our elevator’s descension.
“Damn!” I swore.
“Yeah! Now them niggas know we going down!”
That sprung my inebriated mind into action and I pressed for a new floor, one that was higher than the first.
“When these fucking doors open, I’mma need you to haul ass as quietly as possible to the roof. Okay?”
Brick busted out laughing, holding his sac in his baggy jeans. “This nigga said ‘quietly as possible!’ That’s how you be talkin’ to them muthafuckas you be tutoring?”
I shook my head, turning to watch the dial above the door. “If they catch yo ass, my moms gone fuck you up. Laugh at that, nigga.”
“Nah. I’m with you, Ashton, man!” Brick sounded to sober up that quickly behind me.
The bell tolled and car stopped. Before the door could open fully, I squeezed through, breaking for the exit at the end of the hall. I pushed in the doors and took long lunges up the stairs, four at a time to quiet them. I heard walkie-talkie communication from a distance, alerting me to our proximity. When I made it to the top floor, I slowed to kill the noise of my heavy Timbs. There was one half a story to the rooftop. I prayed there was no alarm on the door. I’d have to eat a mean verbal thrashing and maybe a punch or two from my mother. My twenty-one year old, junior in college ass was too big to be getting whooped with a damn shoe.
An exhale slipped my lungs when the door opened without a sound. Fuck! It was just over twenty degrees outside and all I had on was an undershirt and tee. I dipped down by a vent pipe blowing warm air. The alcohol and adrenaline had me out of breath, not the run itself. I chuckled, thinking how Brick’s Newport-inhaling ass probably got winded and was caught. I knew I’d be good because my cousin never snitched. He’d just have to feel my mother’s wrath alone. Besides, it was him sparking a blunt that got us hemmed up in the first place.
The door burst open and Brick’s heaving ass came barreling out. I laughed so hard at his ass I almost pissed myself. In fact, I jumped to my feet, flew to an adjacent corner and took a relieving piss. Yeah. I was wildin’ the fuck out at Wanda Lee’s apartment building, acting real “Newark” in Newark. Only this
wasn’t “that” Newark.
When I was done, I returned to my seat on the ground. Brick had sparked his blunt again. I rested my head against the building, taking a deep breath. We’d just cleaned hefty plates of leftovers before shooting dice, so I was nice, but for the high-speed chase of the weaponless security.
“You know…” He took a pull from the blunt and held it in when he continued, “the way you hauled ass up here is how you should with that girl.”
I shook my head internally as he exhaled the hemp. “Fuck you talkin’ about?”
“Your Hillman chick. I’m surprised she ain’t come home with you—oh, that’s right!” He clowned, snapping his fingers as though suddenly remembering. “Aunt Wanda ain’t with that roping you shit!”
“Where Tricey at, Deshawn?” I referred to him by his real name then snapped my fingers. “That’s right! At home with all the Michael Kors bags and watches, and Ugg boots you bought her for Christmas to make her temporarily forget that you ain’t wifin’ her like she wanna be.”
Tricey was Brick’s most recent baby’s mother. He used his money to substitute his time with his women.
“That’s because,” he continued in a playful falsetto. “she ain’t NormaJean’s fine ass. She don’t give head on her head and eat ass with class,” he rhymed.
“Fuck outta here!” I cried laughing.
“Word up, yo!” He took another pull. “If it was me, there wouldn’t be no college chick if I had NormaJean bustin’ it wide open for me like she do for you.”
NormaJean and I hadn’t fucked in a long while, but there was no explaining that to Brick, who viewed her as nothing more than a sex toy. That was such a small part of the beauty and magic of her being. I tried explaining this to him over the years, but his understanding was limited to his experiences. Brick only dated hood chicks inspired to do nothing more than floss the dough boys’ profits on the block.
“You play the game you understand,” I murmured.
“What you mean, ock?”
“I mean, you fuck with chicks who move a way you understand and can almost predict. I’m more drawn to females who are independent thinkers and go-getters. NormaJean ain’t a renown, bimbo porn star. She’s a millionaire entrepreneur with investment deals and resources out the ass.”
He shook his head, blowing out smoke. “What college ass words can you pull out your ass for your bougie Texas chic?”
I turned to him. “Now what do you mean?”
The touch of a soft hand caused a shudder of warmth to ripple from the back of my neck to my ass on the padded bench. The music from the church organ and heart-twisting wails from familiar sets of lungs filtered through my psyche. Just as all service long, I’d go in and out of the here and now, not decided on my preference. This touch causing the heating of my cold, cement-like tense frame triggered me to glance to the right of me.
Her eyes were unsure, but her presence heavy enough to force me out of my head. “I’m sorry for your loss. I—I wish I could take the pain away.”
I nodded, lifting from resting my elbows on my knees and forged a smile. While pulling her in for a side hug, my eyes went back to my mourning family. My aunt, Tabitha, Brick’s mother’s, cry raised above the others. And his first baby’s mother, Precious, screamed so loud and hard, she had to be escorted out. Sitting in boiling grief fucking hurt. I couldn’t take another minute of it.
“What I mean, nigga, is you ain’t fucked up out here with these chicks like me. You smart, Ash. Word up! You could bag a dime without trying. A good bitch that’ll be loyal to you and have your babies. Fuck you right, and stay home and out the streets. Shit, with yo bread, she ain’t gone want for nothing.” He laughed. “That’s what you got in Miss Pageant girl. But that ain’t ya speed. You half street, half intellect. You’s a hybrid nigga that need a woman that’s gonna give your complicated ass more than poise and posture. Ya lady gotta give you fuckin…” He snapped his fingers successively, really trying to search for the word this time. “What’s that word. Passion! That’s it, it’s passion. You need a chick that make you work for the pussy through her mind, not her pedigree.” His head bounced with confidence as he took another pull.
I scratched my head. “That’s what you think?”
“My nigga…” He exhaled the smoke. “It’s what I know. You ain’t a predictable cat, so the shortie that’s really for you ain’t gone be what Aunt Wanda or your grams think is best for you. Don’t get so wrapped up in this chick because they scared yo ass when they found out about NormaJean. Fuck that, my nigga. Do you.”
I wanted to laugh at his attempt at a poetic conversation about love. “What if Aivery is that one for me?”
He rolled his eyes, hand slapping his head. “Yeah. Ya stubborn ass gone make me suit up just to prove to ya moms and grams you what they think you is. You’s gonna cave, but it’s all good. I’mma be right there to marry you off and then right there again to catch you when that shit don’t work out. I’mma stay down.”
I finally laughed. Brick was really on some futuristic shit when high. I sat back, trying to catch the heated smoke from the pipe and not freeze my ass off.
“Yo, straight up!” he chirped out of nowhere. “I’m only wearing a suit for your dumb ass wedding to Whitley Gilbert—” I sputtered a laugh. He loved calling Aivery Whitley Gilbert, a character from the sitcom “A Different World”. “—and my fuckin’ funeral. ‘Cause I know Aunt Wanda’s gonna soup my mom up to put my ass in one even though she know I ‘on’t like them shits!”
We laughed, finding something so mindless so damn funny.
“Salt and pepper, baby.” Brick held his palm in the air.
“Gray, bitch.” I met it as we continued howling.
I ambled out of the convenience store of the gas station, peering through the plastic bag for my sour Mike and Ikes. When I made it to the truck, my uncle, June, was outside and on his cell phone. I handed him his Mountain Dew then put the bag on the hood of the truck. I found my cousin, Boobee’s, Funyuns and slipped them to him as he sat in the driver’s seat. The gas attendant was finishing up on filling the tank.
“You eatin’ them shits before the repass,” I joked with Boobee.
We’d just left the cemetery from burying Brick, and Boobee needed to stop for gas and drop off money to his son’s grandmother before we went to the repass at a hall here in Newark. My mother wanted a smaller event in Upper Montclair, but my aunt, Tabitha, was adamant about not excluding people from the block who were without transportation. My uncle, June, also reminded my mother of the risk those same people would take if pulled over in the affluent town just for being Black. Rarely is Wanda Lee talked off a cliff, but she digressed.
“And I’mma fuck something up as soon as we get there. That caterer Aunt Wanda got better be legit.”
I chuckled, this moment bearing the resemblance of after-church hunger I used to experience as a kid with my cousins on my pops’ side. We’d stay up all night fuckin’ around, get up earlier per my rigidly religious grandmother, and move so slow we’d miss breakfast. Then we’d spend the entire long ass service starving. And of course, dinner wasn’t ready when we stepped in from church. We had to wait until my grandmother and her housekeeper were done cooking. So, we’d try finding a store to get snacks from to hold us over.
“It is. She used Kim’s Soul Food on Lyon’s Ave. She’s official,” I vouched for the spot.
My mother had me pick up an order from there a few times, and I’d had some of her food. My mother didn’t eat everybody’s cooking but had made a life’s effort of supporting Black women.
“Nah.” June stuffed his phone into the front pocket of his dress shirt. The burly six foot-eight-inch figure stretched his arms in the air and rolled his thick neck before yawning. “Kim was fuckin’ around on sending a quote. Wanda wasn’t beat. She got my man, Shawn, from the spot on Bergen Street.” June’s eyes rolled low as he tried recalling the name of the restaurant.
“Real Soul Grubs?”
Boobee asked from the driver’s seat.
“Yeah! Them. I went to school with his baby’s moms. She was bad as shit back then! I used to try to fuck so bad, but she wasn’t with it. Now, that bitch look like a fuckin’ hippopotamus! I hit up the spot last year and when I was at the counter, ordering my food, I could see shortie in the kitchen. I ain’t know if baby girl was cooking the food or eating all the shit up.”
Their peal of laughter was contagious. Boobee slapping the steering wheel while curled over made it even funnier.
“Word, man.” Boobee resiled in his seat. “These chicks be risky investments in the long run. You think you wifin’ a Angela Bassett type of lifelong bad ass, and get a fuckin’ wide receiver two years after getting her high school diploma.”
My face balled tight until a guffaw forcefully pushed through my lips. Boobee’s ass was no prize himself at twenty-seven years old with a goddamn beer belly. And Uncle June… While he was still known in the streets for getting busy, he was better with those things that pop than a full round fight these days. He maintained a reputation of knocking niggas out when necessary while managing his own security guard company, but I’d seen him sparring and knew he’d lost his lungs years ago.
Slowing his humor, Boobee’s eyes burst wide. “Yo! Speaking of that shit. Who was shortie at the funeral with the club dress on?” I frowned, not remembering shit but pain from earlier. He laughed. “Word bond, it had long-sleeves, like black mini dress with this…” He gestured his chest, described large breasts. “low ass neckline. The shit was sexy with like…jewelry on it.”
“Oh! The tall brown one with the big ponytail?”
“Yeah.” Boobee affirmed. “Pretty girl. Tomboy, though.”
A shiver rocketed up my spine and a wave of dizziness swirled in my head. Nothing outwardly dramatic, but the warmth I’d felt earlier at the church heated me in an instant.
Tori…
“Like a party dress?” I asked.
“Yeah. It was weird as hell!” Boobee laughed. Her body was sick as fuck, but a goddamn party dress at a funeral?”
