“Blood sisters for life. Them bitches didn’t know that she’s my ‘junkie-ass mama’ too. We left them leaking!” Kei-Kei extended her arm so that they could dap it up, and to her surprise, Temper gave her the first hug of their lengthy friendship.
Taking the prescription of Vicodin was out of the question. She knew Kei-Kei didn’t need the explanation.
“Knock, knock,” Lena said, opening the bedroom door before being permitted to enter. “You say this handsome baby is my son’s, and although I don’t want to believe you, he looks just like him, and I feel it in my soul that he is. Look at him. He’s as sexy as me,” she said, slow dancing with the baby in her arms before continuing. “So being his g-mama, seeing that I’m too young to be called granny, he needs milk. This cow milk diluted with water will fuck his little system up. My grandbaby needs bottles and diapers. And how long do you think I’m going to let him stay wrapped in towels like Baby Jesus? You’ve been in this room for over eight hours without a gun pointed at me, and I haven’t picked up the phone to call a soul. Let me drive out to the twenty-four-hour Kmart and get little man what he needs. And I’m beyond tired of calling him little man, too. What’s his name?”
“I told you to leave me alone and that I didn’t want to see him,” Temper shouted.
“Oops, I must have forgotten. What’s the baby’s name?”
Temper wasn’t in the mood to have Lena shooting things at her all at once. Nevertheless, she knew she wasn’t going to let up until she gave in.
“His name is Emperor Charles and whatever the hell your son’s last name is. I’ll let you go grab your grandson’s shit as long as you take my girl home and tell her mama she’s been with you.”
“Been with me where at this hour, the strip club?” Lena snapped.
“Hell, I don’t know. Come up with a lie a mama would believe. Your son is a damn good liar. I’m sure he got it from you,” Temper finished with a roll of her low, bloodshot eyes.
Lord, be a tongue depressor. I’m about ready to cuss this little bitch out and deal with whatever consequences come with it, Lena thought. Instead, she said, “Come on, Kei-Kei, and here, get the baby.”
“I’m not watching that little boy. Take him with you!”
“I’m not taking this baby out in this night air, especially not wrapped in a fucking towel. He doesn’t bite. All you have to do is sit here and hold him without smoking weed all in his face. Come on, Kei-Kei, so that I can lie to your damn mama. And, Temper,” she said, now standing at the doorway, “you need to go back to the drawing board when it comes to my grandson’s name. His daddy’s last name is Charles, and I’ve seen you walk around this neighborhood with your head all high like you’re hood royalty, but let me be the first to tell you you’re not. There ain’t no black men named Emperor coming out of this raggedy-ass neighborhood.” She exited the room before Temper could speak.
“I’ll be back to check on you later, Tee, but . . .” Kei-Kei hesitated as she walked to the door.
“But what?” Temper asked, clearly irritated by having to watch the baby.
“Um, I was just thinking. I know the baby looks like K-Mack and all, but are you sure it’s his? You told me y’all had only got down like twice, and that you were fucking with a lame you met on the party line. How do you know the baby ain’t that other nigga’s?”
“Because I lied, bitch. The shit between K-Mack and me got real, and I didn’t want you to know. Fuck that. I didn’t even want me to know.” Temper giggled. “We’ve been getting down for over a year. No condom, no pull out. His pussy, my dick. I know I should have told you, and you have every right to be fucked up with me about all this shit, but what can I say besides I’m sorry? It’s my life that I fucked up, not yours.”
“Shit, Tee, you still don’t get it. If it’s your life, it’s my life too. I wish you had kept it real with me about all of this shit. That was a fucked-up way to find out you were pregnant, but I guess we all got our fucked-up secrets. I’ll be back as long as my mama don’t kill me.” She chuckled and closed the door behind her.
Temper sat the baby down on the bed, and instantly he began to cry. She didn’t know how to care for a child. Even when she babysat for her homeboys in the hood, she had a rule that the child had to be able to walk, talk, and use the bathroom on their own before she’d agree to watch him.
“Shh, hush, little nigga. Your granny will be back soon,” she said, which seemed to make the child scream louder. She turned on the television to try to drown him out, but that didn’t work. She went to Lena’s room and grabbed the sports bottle she had been using to feed the baby and stuck it in his mouth. The milk began to spill all over his face as she attempted to feed him as he lay on his back. She scooped him up, and magically he stopped crying.
“Oh, you’re like your sorry-ass daddy, I see. You like my touch. Don’t get used to it because I promise you this is the last time I hold you. Once your granny gets back, I’m bouncing.”
She didn’t understand why the more she talked to the baby, the more relaxed he seemed to get. In a matter of minutes, the baby was out cold. Temper stared at him in disgust. He had his father’s pointy nose, big, flat forehead, and bright yellow skin. Willful ignorance would prevent her from seeing the similarities the baby had to her. She refused to search for her looks in the child and credited his skin color to his father. She couldn’t lie. The baby was beautiful. Not that she had been around enough babies to judge accurately. She’d only seen a handful of babies to compare and contrast. Using her memory, she concluded that he was born with more hair than average, and he didn’t have the wrinkles most newborns had. Temper ran her index finger across one of his locks and almost panicked at the dent he had at the top of his head. She didn’t know if all babies had that, yet she was sure that if it were a problem, Lena would have disclosed it by now.
“Damn, look at your purple lips. You’ve been smokin’ that good too, I see.” She giggled as she ran her finger across his bottom lip. Temper didn’t realize that she was warming up to the baby. If it weren’t for the phone ringing that broke her concentration, she would have kissed him on his forehead. She didn’t answer the phone the first time it rang. It was four o’clock in the morning, and nobody should be calling at that hour. When it rang for a second time, she assumed it had to be Lena.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Hello? Who dis?”
The sound of Khasema’s voice speaking his typical slang instantly pissed her off.
“Nigga, you called here. Who are you looking for?”
“I know where I called. I called my house, and nobody should be answering my mama’s phone except her. Who the fuck is this?”
Not knowing what to say next, Temper hung up. She didn’t expect him to call, and even if he did, she assumed it would be a collect call that she could deny. On the other hand, remembering the hustler he was, she was sure that he’d acquired a burner cell phone or had a three-way hookup, which meant he’d be calling back. When the phone rang for the third time, she had her thoughts together and was ready to spit fire at his ass.
“Man, who the fuck is this? Put my mama on the phone.”
“She ain’t here, and you know who the fuck this is, nigga. Don’t play dumb.”
“Temper. Bitch, I thought that was your voice. What are you doing at my mama’s house? I told your young, stupid ass I wasn’t fucking with you no more after you sent that bullshit letter trying to stick me for abortion money. Put my mama on the phone, ho, so I can tell her to put you out of our house.”
“I already told you, she’s not here, bitch, and don’t worry about why I’m at your mama’s house. You need to be worrying about keeping that ass soapy so you can have commissary while you serve your time, inmate. You have responsibilities when you touch down. Don’t let them niggas raw dog your asshole until you’re riding around this bitch in a wheelchair.”
“Fuck you. The only thing I gotta do when I touch down is to have my bitch whoop your hood-rat ass
. That shit right there is mandatory.”
Temper fell silent at his confession of being in a new relationship. It was true that what they had, whatever it was, ended when he found out she wasn’t 18 and began saying she was pregnant by him. He had been hounding her about hitting it for months, and she tried shooting him down several times. It was working until she began pushing nickels and dimes of dope for him. His hounding became worse. She didn’t lie to him about her age for the relationship. She did it for the job. When Khasema asked her why she wanted to catch bites for him when her ass needed to be on a school bus headed to get educated, she told him she had graduated high school, and college wasn’t for her. She never actually said she was 18, though she did make herself seem grown. When the pregnancy symptoms began hitting her hard, she confirmed her suspicions with half a dozen dollar pregnancy tests. When he’d called her from jail, she’d told him that she needed to talk with him and it was important.
“Tell me,” he’d demanded.
“I don’t think I can over this phone. That shit is suspect.”
Not knowing if her words would incriminate him more, he’d urged her to come to visit. When the application was denied, saying, “Minors are only allowed to visit when an approved adult visitor accompanies them,” he cut her ass off like a past-due electric bill.
“Fuck you and that bitch. Tell her to run up. I bet money that I’ll put her on her ass. Ain’t none of these hood-rat bitches in the Low Bottoms fucking with me.”
“Bitch, please, you ain’t fucking with Kei-Kei.” He didn’t mean to say her name. He promised Kei-Kei that he’d never tell Temper about what they had going on. It wasn’t supposed to be anything more than homie love from time to time, yet more had sparked. Nevertheless, the cat was out of the bag. What could he do?
“Kei-Kei who?”
“Aw, I guess your best friend forgot to mention how she was riding this dick too, huh? I like fried chicken more than fried rice, you dumbass Asian bitch. You didn’t have enough dark meat in you. Ain’t no black man alive passing up barbeque sauce for a bottle of salty-ass soy sauce. So yeah, we’re fucking, and if you don’t get your ass up out of my mama’s crib, I’m going to send her through there to fuck you up.”
Temper felt heartbroken, and the battle she thought she was ready to fight had been won with just his simple words. She was going to hang up in his face at the same time the baby started crying in the background and caught his attention.
“Whose fucking baby is that?”
“Yours, muthafucka, and when you touch down, ask yo’ bitch Kei-Kei to help you raise it. That spoiled-ass tartar sauce you’re spitting out yo’ fishy dick made a baby like I tried to tell yo’ ass. I guess you better learn to love egg rolls, muthafucka, because your son is spitting soy sauce too!”
She hung up the phone and left it off the hook so that he couldn’t call back. She wished she had said more than weak condiment jokes. She should have mentioned that he had broken up with one minor only to fuck with the next. Still, even with Kei-Kei stabbing her in her back, she couldn’t help but feel the need to be loyal to her. A part of her hoped he was lying, contrary to her gut saying that he wasn’t. That’s how that bitch knew his mama be on that bingo bus. She was leaving me hanging to dip over here Saturday evenings.
Temper picked the baby up, but this time he wouldn’t stop crying. She wanted to cry too and couldn’t. There was something in Kei-Kei’s betrayal that gave her the strength to hold back her tears and focus on the baby’s. She tried feeding him the milk again, and he spit it out. She rocked him like she saw Lena doing, and that wasn’t working either.
“Damn, all you do is cry. What’s the matter? Are you hungry?”
Instantly, a lightbulb came on, and she remembered the milk that had been dripping from her breasts for months. She emptied the sports bottle and tried squeezing milk from her nipple into it. Only drops came out.
“Look, I’m going to put my tittie in your mouth, and you better not bite me,” she commanded as if he had a mouthful of teeth or understood what biting was. She dedicated fifteen minutes without complaint to trying to get him to latch on to her now-C-cup breasts, and he wouldn’t. Frustrated and ready to give up, she felt his jaws lock around her nipple, and he began to suck.
“Oh, shit, that hurts!” she screamed out in horror. Not only was her breast sensitive to his mouth, but the contractions she had during labor also came back to kick her in the ass. There wasn’t a need to lie. She was coldhearted. Giving up and letting the baby starve to save herself from the pain crossed her mind, except the thrill to do it wasn’t there. Starving him felt like she was starving herself, and she couldn’t go through with it. Whatever the feeling was that was taking over made her uncomfortable. It made her second-guess the decision she’d made months ago. I can’t keep this little nigga. He will slow me down. If I get straight, I’ll come back for him, she coached herself into believing. She leaned back and bucked up. Feeding him was the least she could do for him seeing that she was trashing him anyway.
When he finally fell asleep, releasing her nipple, Lena said, “Now you have to burp him.”
She had been standing in the door from Temper’s first attempt to latch the baby on to her nipple and planned to help if she hadn’t had the thought, this little heffa might have a motherly bone in her after all. Let me see if she can do it. After watching her breastfeed successfully, she spoke up about burping him, knowing Temper wouldn’t have a clue to relieve the gas from his stomach.
Lena put down all the bags she was toting, placed the baby over Temper’s shoulder, and forced her fingers to massage his back. “See? At this age, he doesn’t need all those pats on the back,” she said once the baby let out an air-filled burp.
Temper laid him down and rushed over to the nightstand where she had laid her gun down.
“Peep this shit, here. You got everything you need for the little nigga, and I’ve been here long enough. I’m about to bounce, and you’re not going to stop me this time. He’s your grandson, and if you don’t believe me, have a DNA test done on his bitch-ass daddy.”
“I’m not going to try to stop you, trust me. I’m glad to see you go. I stood in that store, debating whether to call the police and put an end to all of this shit after the way Kei-Kei’s mama talked shit to me, but I was more worried that you’d leave the baby here alone, impatient to hit the road. Instead of getting your little disrespectful ass locked up, I got a few things for you to take with you on your little trip. I was a young girl once, and I can tell by the look in your eyes that you’re not trying to get home. Wherever you’re going feels more like home already, doesn’t it?”
Temper hesitated before answering, not knowing what tricks the lady had up her sleeve. She nodded, and then Lena handed her a bag with a sweatsuit in it, super-absorbent pads with wings, black house slippers, and a heart-shaped necklace that read MOTHER with a single stone on it.
“Go ahead and get yourself together. I have a grandson to raise.”
Temper grabbed the bag, showered, and came out in the sweatsuit. She threw the clothes she previously had on in the trash and hightailed to the front door without taking another look at the baby. When she reached for the knob, Lena was standing behind her, holding her gun.
“You forget to grab this?”
“Nah. Where I’m going, I won’t need that anymore.”
“Umm, okay,” Lena groaned, not wanting to be left with the gun. “Look at me, Temper. If you’re sure this is what you want to do, why do you have tears in your eyes?”
Temper turned around to face her, and the necklace she was wearing turned on her neck.
“Never mind. I think I have my answer,” she said as Temper stormed out the door before she drowned in her tears.
She glanced back once she crossed the property line and said, “Name the baby Symmetry Truth. You can give him his daddy’s last name if you want to.”
“You know you could have come up with something better than that shit. Wha
t kind of name is Symmetry Truth? Is it Asian?”
“No, it’s not Asian. It’s his name, and so are the meanings of the words when you put the two of them together if you raise him right. Tell him to let the world know they can suck his dick and drink his soy sauce if they don’t like it.” Temper laughed as she walked down the abandoned early morning street. For the first time in almost nine months, she walked the streets lighter.
Chapter Three
The only time the hood felt at peace was at sunrise. The chickens that the Mexicans housed in their backyards would crow, giving the deadly streets a warm, country feel to them. It was cold, yet Temper’s body was on fire. She charged the rise in body temperature to the fleece sweatsuit she was wearing and kept it pushing. Normally she would walk in the security of the alleys and hop gate upon gate as a short cut through Kei-Kei’s yard to get home, except climbing felt like a task she wasn’t ready to complete. And knowing her anger, she would have been tempted to run into Kei-Kei’s house to put a beating on her while she slept.
Temper spent the last nine months fighting her hunger pangs. Her craving for bathtub tamales, tacos, and dollar Chinese food won those fights most of the time. As she passed the Hispanic lady and her cart filled with beef and pork tamales, the smell of the combination made her feel sick. She called Earl twice, similar to an alcoholic having their first beer of the day.
“Ay, are you straight?” She couldn’t determine whether it was the words or the person they belonged to that caused her to jump.
“Yeah, I’m good, big homie. That first sip of the day got me fucked up,” she lied.
Carl Weber's Kingpins Page 4
