by Shan
"Yo, B! Where you at?" I called out before I entered the house. B stepped into my view and motioned for me to come over. He was holding a glock onto someone, but I couldn’t see who. Damn, I hope this nigga ain’t did shit to Rozalyn; I thought as walked around the corner to see a female lying on the couch badly beaten.
Her face was covered in blood, and the spot she was laying in was stained with blood that dripped onto the floor. The bulging size of her stomach told me that it was Rozalyn. She didn’t move or make a sound.
"Where the fuck is Toya? I told you to bring Toya. Somebody needs to put clothes on her and take her to the hospital before she dies!" Brandon yelled without taking his eyes off the person he was holding the gun on.
"She in the car. What the fuck happened?"
"Go get her! She gotta go to the hospital and I need you to go bail Tae out of jail!"
"Brandon—you know he said—"
"Trust me when he see this nigga he’ll be happy you bailed his ass out."
I walked a little closer to see whom Brandon was holding hostage. He was lying in a pool of blood, and wore all-black with a ski mask sitting at the top of his head.
"What the fuck?" I asked when I saw his face. "What the fuck did this nigga do? Did he do this shit to her?"
"Oh, my God! Aaggh!" I turned around to see Toya standing ten feet away from Rozalyn’s body. "Oh, my God! Who did this to her? Is she alive? Rozalyn? Rozalyn?"
"Yo', I need you to put some clothes on her. I tried but I couldn’t do it." Brandon said. "They fucked her up! They didn’t have to do her like that!"
"Why would she not have any clothes on? Did you do this to her? Brandon, what did you do? You fucking alcoholic! Did you put your hands on her!" Latoya ran at Brandon, but I grabbed her right before she was able to claw his face out. She pushed me away and covered her mouth in shock when she saw the person lying on the floor. "He did this! Did he do this to her?"
"Toya, just fucking get her dressed and take her to the fucking hospital! Let us take care of this!" I yelled.
"Hey, Hey…..everybody okay?"
Brandon and I both turned the gun towards the voice, but quickly dropped them when we realized it was Tavon. He walked over and looked at Rozalyn in disbelief.
"Yo, is she okay? Is she still alive?"
"Barely," Latoya said as she tried to put a pair of pants on Rozalyn.
"Watch out! Let me take her!" Tavon yelled.
"No, I got her. I’m going to take her. Oh, my God, she’s bleeding so badly," Toya cried.
"Toya, let me take her so I can make sure she gets there safely," Tavon said.
"Von, I don’t need you to take her! I got her! Don’t fucking touch her muthafucka'! You think I would fucking trust you with her after you done already tried to kill her before! You probably had something to do with this shit. I wouldn’t be surprised looking at that muthafucka' over there!"
Tavon looked shocked that Latoya spoke to him that way, but I wasn’t shocked at all. My baby spoke her mind at all times. I never had a problem with her holding back on how she felt. She took Rozalyn in and treated her like a little sister, so I know that girl was near and dear to her heart. She wasn’t about to let no one take control of this situation.
I watched as Tavon walked over to the muthafucka' that was soaked in blood on the floor. He knelt down towards him, took a pistol from underneath his shirt, and aimed it directly at his head.
"No! No! No!" Brandon and I yelled and dived at Tavon at the same damn time, but it was too late. The gun had already gone off.
POW!
20: Tamar
"1.…2.…3.…4," I counted as I did my morning pushups. This jail shit was nothing to me, not that I prefer to be in here rather than out there, but it was nothing to me to sit this lil’ ol’ time out.
Because of all the drama Shalea caused, I ended up being charged with a domestic assault and on the day of my arraignment them muthafuckas had the nerve to set my bail at three-hundred thousand dollars like I would be dummy enough to pay it.
I’m quite sure that Shalea had ran her mouth and probably told them that I was this big time dope dealer and had a lot of money. They figured I would pay the bail and give them the opportunity to open up a federal investigation against me. Yea right. They would have grounds for being suspicious enough to know where my funds were coming from.
Shalea had to have told them that she would cooperate with them on bringing me down which is why she was able to get a suspended sentence and only have to do ninety days in a drug rehabilitation program. Dumb ass bitch.
My pops had come to see me a couple of weeks ago and let me know that in light of recent events he along with Dmitri, decided that it would be best if someone else was in charge of running the drug operation we had set up.
I laughed in his face and told him to go fuck his self. He expected me to go on some rampage and flip the fuck out, but it wasn’t happening. He fell right into my little trap just like Trell had done. It would only be a matter of time before shit was going exactly the way Dmitri and I had planned it.
Sitting in jail was just a little vacation for me. The streets were about to fall off. Everybody's money was about to stop flowing in and everybody was going to be really unhappy. He just did me a fucking favor and didn’t even realize it, but he will soon.
"Ha, ha, ha," I laughed out loud. Now he should know that Dmitri is not on his team.
"Andrews, you made bail!" a tall black skinny guard said.
"What the fuck you mean I made bail?" I asked.
"I don’t know the details. Pack your shit and let’s go!"
I got up and sat on the bottom bunk. I rubbed my lengthy, goatee that I decided to grow while I was in here. I shook my head as I tried to figure who bailed me out and what for.
After I packed up the very few belongings I had, I followed the guard through the tiny halls of the jail to the processing desk. Once I signed a few documents I was instructed to call my bails bondsman within twenty-four hours of my release and then sent on my way.
Walking outside and looking around for my ride, I didn’t see anyone or any car that looked familiar so I just took a seat on the steps, pulled out a Newport from my personal items that was collected when I was arrested, and fired it up.
Honk! Honk!
I looked up and saw a Black Dodge Durango as it pulled in front of the building and rolled it’s window down. "Damn, cus you don’t know your fam when you see them?" a female voice asked.
"Kayla?" I questioned.
"Yea boy, now come on!" she yelled.
I puffed on my cancer stick and walked down the steps to her car. I jumped in the passenger side, checked the backseat to make sure no one was sitting behind me. This was my baby cousin, but that didn’t mean that I trusted her.
"What you doing picking me up Kayla? What’s going on?" I asked.
"I have no idea. Tavon called me and told me to come pick some money up and come post your bond. He told me it’s some major shit going on and they need you out ASAP."
"Is it my girl?" I asked.
"Who Shalea? Nah, he ain’t say nothing about Shalea," said Kayla.
"Nah, not Shalea. Rozalyn."
"Who the hell is Rozalyn?"
"That’s my new bitch. She supposed to be pregnant with my baby. About seven months now."
"What? Let me find out I go away to school and come back and you done started a family. What happened to Shalea, Tae?"
"I don’t wanna talk about that hoe. She the reason I was in this bitch anyway," I said nonchalantly.
"Alright, I won’t say anything else about her," Kayla said and fired up a blunt.
"I wonder what the hell going on. I wasn’t expecting to go home for at least another two months."
"I don’t know. He didn’t tell me anything. He just told me to do this and do that and that’s what I did." Kayla toked on the blunt. "I saw your house, it’s beautiful, Tae. You have come a long way big cus. I am so proud of you."
"Yea, you know. I’m trying to do big things before I die."
"Don’t say that. You are not going to die."
"I came too close to believe that."
"Yea, I heard about that. Damn, I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you. I really wanted to get down here but—"
"It’s cool Ki-Ki. I really didn’t want anybody seeing me like that. Nigga was fucked up."
"I bet," Kayla sighed, and then passed me the blunt.
We pulled up in front of my house and I noticed how weary it looked; a little haunted. It wasn’t another house for at least three-hundred yards down; only a total of three on the entire block.
Kayla and I got out of the car and made our way inside. I noticed that my front door was hanging and hoped to God this wasn’t no damn setup. I didn’t have any type of weapon on me and knew for a fact that I didn’t have any stashed in the house.
A trail of blood led me from the corridor into the living room where I spotted a tiny sofa in the middle of the floor that was covered in blood. I also eyed a lifeless body occupying a space in the middle of my floor. Tavon, Keylan, and Brandon were all in their very own corner as they stared at the body in silence.
I looked at each of them in their faces before I walked over to see who it was that one of them killed.
There was a nickel sized hole in the middle of his forehead, and his eyes had rolled behind the back of his head. It took everything in me not to shed a tear for this nigga. Just looking at him, the clothes he wore, the ski-mask that lie before his head reminded of the clowns that came busting in my trap and damn near killed me.
I choked up a little as the hurt and betrayal I was felt took over my soul. I didn’t want to believe that he was responsible for trying to put me six feet under.
"I don’t know what to do. One of y'all ready to take a body," I said as I kept my stare to the floor.
I could hear Kayla standing over me. She cried as she looked down at the dead body. I hated to do this, but the only way out of it was to burn the house down.
There was no way we could call the police and say we found a body without being questioned and investigated. Looking at the nickel sized hole in his head was signs that it was done close up so there was no way we could argue self defense.
I took two fingers and closed his eyes; stunned that this was happening right now. I wished they would’ve just left me in jail and handled this shit themselves. I wasn’t running shit anymore. Tavon was supposed to be in charge now. He's the fucking boss now, so why the hell did he need me here?
"Burn it down," I said and stood up and looked in Keylan's direction.
"What? Tae, no! You can’t do that to him!" Kayla screamed.
"Ki-Ki, that muthafucka' is dead! It ain’t shit we can do for him now!" I roared.
"We can’t just burn him up, Tae! That is wrong!" she protested.
"Ki-Ki, he's dead! That’s just how shit goes sometimes. I don’t wanna do the shit either, but I’m not about to sit in jail for murder! Please tell me one of y'all got some gas or something in your car!" I yelled and walked off. "Roz! Yo, Roz!"
"Roz ain’t here," Keylan said.
"Where she at?" I inquired.
"Toya took her to the hospital," Brandon sighed.
"For what? What happened?" My eyes drifted over to the blood stained couch and my hands went to the top of my head, "Is my baby okay?"
"Fuck that bitch and that baby! We gotta problem we gotta deal with right here, right now!" Tavon yelled. "You claiming that baby one day and the next you not, Right now nobody in here gives a fuck about that baby!"
I walked over to Tavon to get in his face. "What? You say fuck who?"
"Get your ass out my face, Tae!" he yelled.
"What the fuck you gonna do? I’m sick of your bitch ass always running your damn mouth—you know what— fuck all of you muthafuckas! This shit here just don’t fucking seem right and I ain’t got shit to do with it! Y'all handle this shit on y'all own!"
I gave my brother one last mug and walked out of the house. I was beginning to think that none of them niggas were trustworthy. This shit just didn’t seem right. They bailed me out of jail against my wishes to come home and help cover up a damn body!
They should have had Kayla pick me up and take me to the damn hospital to be with my girl and my baby, not for this shit.
I walked a good five miles before I came to a store that had a phone booth. I didn’t have a cell phone or any money and I couldn’t think of anybody I could trust at this moment. I picked up the phone and made a collect call to the one person whom I haven’t talked to in months. My moms.
Just like I thought she would; she accepted my phone call and came to pick me up without asking any questions.
"You look good, haven’t seen you in a while," Cheryl, my mama said.
"’Preciate it," I said.
I love my moms, don’t get me twisted, but as much as I loved her, I hated her. She was the type of woman that would do anything to please her man not thinking about how it would or could affect her child.
She allowed for her kids to be beat, tortured, and subjected to violence all because she was too scared if she said something she would be all alone.
My pops taught us a lot, which is why me and my brothers are so strong today, but he was a ruthless ass coward, who drowned himself in liquor and inflicted pain on his sons for fun.
I remember when I finally got tired of the way my pops was doing us and I finally stood up to him. It seemed that ever since then I was a target for him. He would force me to sleep on the cold ass basement floor with no blanket or pillow for weeks at time. My pops once shoved my face into a pissy toilet because I told him the next time he put his hands on my mama I was going to kill him.
He would come home some days in a good mood, happy, giving out hugs and money, but when he saw me his mood would change. He would take his belt off and beat me skinless all because he said I was too dark to be his child. He accused my moms of cheating on him when he was having to work out of town.
He didn’t even allow me to call him daddy like the twins, said I had to call him Tahj or uncle Tahj. That nigga even allowed Roderick, Brandon and Key to call him daddy when they came to stay with us but shit I had to address him by his first name. He hated me because he questioned if I was his and because I was the only one brave enough to stand up to him.
Any reason he could find to inflict me pain he would. It could be like me forgetting to take out the trash or to wash dishes or leaving something out of place around the house. No matter if it was my responsibility or not, it seemed to always get blamed on me.
My punishment would either be a beating or standing outside shirtless in thirteen degree weather balancing bricks on each hand or some more crazy shit.
I could go on and on about the shit I had to go thru as a child while my moms just sat around and watched, but hell why pour salt on old wounds. I just couldn’t help but think about all the times I stood up for her. The times when I tried my best to protect her when nobody else would and she never once stood up for me and tried to protect me. She never would leave him, never put him out, never yelled at him for anything he ever did to us; it was always ‘No sir and yes sir’ to him.
You could look at my pops today and never believe any of the shit I’m saying. You might become perplexed by the thousand dollar suits he wears, the whips he push, the big time law firm he has in Dallas, or the multimillion dollar mansion he shares with his white girlfriend. All that shit because I set him straight. If it wasn’t for me that muthafucka’ would be either dead or on his way to dying from kidney failure from all the alcohol he sucked into his system. One day, I was too fed up with his bullshit and shot him three fucking times. I tried to body that muthafucka. I wanted his ass six feet under for what he did to my damn mama.
He came home drunk as a skunk about one or two o’clock in the morning. He was on that bullshit again about how he didn’t believe that I was his child. He demanded to have a DNA t
est done immediately. She called him on his bullshit and he started beating on her, kicking her, punching her, biting her, and throwing shit at her.
The twins sat crying and only yelled for him stop. Brandon and Key were somewhere hiding and Roderick was pissing his damn pants like he always did when he got scared. Me. I went and grabbed the .38 that he kept in a shoebox on top of his closet. I came out busting on that fool. Straight tried to kill that nigga!
Unfortunately, he didn’t die, but I never saw that coward muthafucka’ again until he came to me one day with the proposition of running the streets when I was locked up.
He thought he was doing me a favor or whatever, but little did he know that I knew who was really behind the idea. Dmitri had things sewed up in Dallas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and was trying to take over Atlanta and Miami, but Tahj had the power of Atlanta in his hands. His reign was almost over though.
Tahj damn near killed my moms that night. She was in a coma for six months and we were all forced to stay with my grandma. I didn’t start hating her until she awoke from that coma and started asking where her husband was like he was all that mattered. She never asked about the well-being of her kids.
"Are you going to tell me what’s going on?" my moms, Cheryl asked bringing me back to reality.
"Nope," I said. "Did you bring what I asked you to bring?"
"Yea, it’s in the shoebox underneath your seat."
I looked in the backseat to check if my little sister Taylana was watching before I reached under my seat and grabbed the package I asked my moms to bring me when I called her.
"You not about to do nothing crazy are you?" she asked.
"Nah, ma. Not right now anyway," I answered truthfully.
"Tae, why you didn’t come to the family reunion with your brothers this year? I was really hoping to see you there."
"You know I ain’t got time for that shit."
"Von, told me you was locked up again. I just really wish you boys would straighten up your life before it’s too late! I already got one son locked up behind some mess. I just—"
"Hey, I’m really not trying to hear that right now."
