by Sa'id Salaam
“Daddy!” Shyne fussed and stomped her little feet.
“Yeah, I know. I see you got this so I’ll go fix breakfast and lunch,” Killa said on his way out. Yolo wasn’t faring much better with their son.
“Wake up, handsome. You don’t want to be late for your first day of school,” she sang in a motherly voice as she entered his messy room. It looked like a toy store’s dump truck had backed up to it and emptied its load.
“I’m not going. I’m just gonna get my G.E.D,” Sun explained quite reasonably and pulled the cover over his head. He’d researched alternatives to school on his computer and decided it was the best course of action.
“I…uh…you…,” Yolo stammered at a loss for words. “Okay, I’m about to get my B.E.L.T!”
“Okay, Mommy!” Sun called out as he rolled out of bed. Both he and his sister could read, spell, and write very well thanks to their big sister, Christi. He knew B.E.L.T spelled ass whooping and wanted no parts of it.
****
“Breakfast is served!” the proud papa announced when his gorgeous kids entered the eat-in kitchen.
The eggs, waffles, and turkey bacon spoke for themselves. It was the strange metal boxes that had the smart kids confused.
“What’s a Wonder Woman?” Shyne asked, scrunching her face up like whatever it was stank.
“Wonder Woman!” Killa replied, like the name itself was self-explanatory. “And Aqua Man for Sun.”
“Who?” Sun asked, frowning up at the strange figures on the metal boxes.
“Eat,” Yolo demanded, since that would be easier than trying to explain the ancient super heroes.
Eat the kids did. Then it was off to the bus stop. If Yolo had her way, she would’ve dropped her children off and picked them back up in an armored truck. However, their daddy insisted that they ride the bus with the other kids.
“Damn, we’re the only parents out here,” Yolo exclaimed. She was right, there wasn’t another parent anywhere in sight.
“They’ve probably been turning up all night and had to turn in,” Killa guessed. He was right, too. A few minutes later, a school bus pulled to a hissing stop and the kids boarded.
“Bye-bye! Love you! Muah! Muah!” Yolo called out as she blew kisses at her children as the bus pulled away with them on it. “Come on!”
“Where?” Killa asked as he ran to keep up with her.
She hopped into her car and followed the bus all the way to the school.
****
“Good morning, class. I’m Miss Cranford,” the teacher greeted. She turned and wrote her name on the blackboard, giving Sun a chance to watch her booty.
“Born…God…Supreme…Williams?” she struggled as she looked around for the raised hand.
“Peace, Earth. I’m the God Supreme,” a little Five Percenter called out.
“You’re not God!” Shyne said with a disgusted scowl upon her face. She knew that there was only one God and he wasn’t it.
“The Black man is God,” he replied, rattling off the bullshit his Five Percenter parents had filled his little head with.
“If you God, then why didn’t you comb your hair and why you ashy? You God, but you couldn’t find no lotion?” Shyne wanted to know.
“Sun and Shyne Forrest. Twins!” Miss Cranford cheered, bringing unwanted attention to the two.
“Sun and Shyne? Kinda names is that?” a wannabe bully wanted to know. Little William Johnson was a runt but had a dozen cousins at the school to back him up. “They moms must be on crack!”
“My mother isn’t on crack!” Shyne stood and declared.
She had no idea what crack was but was pretty sure that it wasn’t something good. Little William, on the other hand, knew exactly what it was since his mother was on it. Picking on other kids helped him forget about the rumbles of his empty stomach.
“Sit down, Shyne!” Sun warned when he saw a few kids coming near. Shyne, however, was too busy going in to see the danger. He knew his sister had no chill so it came as no surprise when she reached out and slapped dust from the other child. The cousins jumped in and Sun took off. “Run!”
But Shyne didn’t run. She stood and fought. She got her ass whipped, since four on one isn’t much of a fight and she was quickly subdued, but she didn’t run. Miss Cranford moved in to break it up and then sent all the kids to the principal’s office.
“Already?” Miss Hunter exclaimed at the first fight of the school year. The sexy principal wasn’t quite thirty yet, but was already running her own school. “I’m calling your parents!”
“You better yell loud cuz we ain’t got no phone,” Little William laughed. His mother was sitting in a crack house somewhere, with a belly full of semen, getting high.
****
“Ssss,” Yolo hissed as Killa slid inside of her. They had taken a quick nap when they’d gotten in but now it was time to fuck again.
“Ssss is right,” Killa agreed as he entered her hot box.
He had just got a good stroke going when Yolo’s phone began to ring.
“Pst, yeah right,” she huffed at the call that was about to be ignored.
Killa slipped his tongue into her mouth just as her answering machine app kicked in. The app served as an old school device, allowing callers to be heard as they left their message. It was actually the first form of Caller ID.
“Good afternoon, Miss…Jackson,” the principal said, noticing that the kids had a different last name, “This is Miss Hunter, the principal over at Wyandanch Elementary. There seems to have been a slight incident at school…”
“Get up! Get up!” Yolo shouted as she shoved Killa up and out of her. He rolled over and off the bed as she scrambled to catch the call before it ended. “Hello, hello! What happened? Are my babies okay?”
“Yes, they’re fine. They got into a fight and…,”
“I’m on my way!” Yolo shouted and tore out of the room.
“Wait! Hold up! Yolo! Yo…lo!” Killa yelled as he ran behind her.
“What? My babies need me!” She yelled back over her shoulder as she reached the front door.
“Okay, but they need you to put some clothes on first,” Killa said, alerting her to her nakedness. “It’s not show and tell!”
“Ha ha,” Yolo quipped, twisting her lips as she marched back upstairs to slip into a sweat suit. Killa lagged a step behind to watch her ass jiggle since she hadn’t bothered to put on panties.
“I’ll drive,” Killa suggested once they got outside. He knew that she would speed, which could lead to some cop pulling them over, which could lead to that same cop getting shot in his face.
Killa pulled into the school’s parking lot and before he could bring the car to complete stop, Yolo bolted from it. She sprinted into the school while he calmly walked in behind her. Sun and Shyne were seated in the foyer of the office when she burst in looking like a crazy lady.
“What happened? Huh? Huh?” she demanded, getting all up in the secretary’s face.
“We got beat up!” Shyne said happily. She was lumped up and bleeding, but she’d still had a good time.
Yolo turned to Sun, who didn’t have a mark on him. “You too?” she asked her son.
“He ran,” Shyne said and shrugged with her palms up.
“Ran? You little…” Yolo growled and went after him. He ran again and ducked behind his father just as he entered the office.
“Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Jackson?” Principal Hunter asked as she came out of her office. She looked at Yolo then at Killa and got stuck.
“We’re not married,” Killa explained, the words sounding like music to the principal’s ears. He quickly scanned her from head to toe while Yolo silently fumed.
“Follow me,” she said and spun around to lead the parents into her office. She made sure to sling her ample ass from side to side, knowing he would watch. He did, and so did his son.
“What happened? Why does my daughter have knots on her head, looking like she has horns?” Yolo wanted to know.
“Looking like a young sheep,” Killa cracked and cracked up. “Yolo had a little lamb.”
“And just how is this funny?” she demanded of him before turning back to the educator and asking again, “What happened?”
“Kid stuff, nothing to be too concerned about. Kids fight, you know,” Miss Hunter said, sounding slightly condescending.
“Nothing to…Do you have kids?” Yolo asked.
“No, I have no children,” she replied to Killa as if he’d asked the question. “From what I gathered, a few boys were teasing your son and your daughter jumped on them.”
“And Sun ran,” Killa said, shaking his head at his son through the window. “That’s enough for the day. We’ll take them home and try again tomorrow.”
“I understand,” the principal said, batting her eyelashes as if Killa’s baby mama wasn’t in the room. Killa couldn’t help but laugh when he heard a low growl emanating from Yolo.
“Go ‘head, babe. I need to ask Miss Thang…um…I mean Miss Hunter a quick question.”
“Sure,” Killa replied and started for the door. He stopped, turned, and took one last look at the pretty woman, knowing that there was a good chance that she might not look like that anymore after dealing with his baby mama. She was known for giving reverse facelifts.
“And just how may I help you?” Miss Hunter asked in a tone reserved for the children.
“Oh, I was just wondering if I was going to have to fuck you up about my man?”
“Absolutely not! I just try to make sure that the dads realize how important they are at this stage of their children’s development,” she explained.
“Oh, well, okay,” Yolo said, buying the bullshit that the lady was selling. She cracked a smile then exited the office to catch up with her family.
“And then I fuck their brains out!” the principal laughed behind Yolo’s departing back. Luckily for her, she was out of ear shot or Wyandanch Elementary would be needing a new principal.
Chapter 3
“Here we go,” Killa grumbled to himself when he saw Yolo come marching out of the school like a North Korean soldier.
“Mommy is mad,” Shyne observed from the backseat.
“Take me to Home Depot!” she demanded as she joined them in the car.
“Home Depot? For what?” Killa asked.
“I need one of those big ass pots! You know, like the ones witches use in the movies.”
“A cauldron? For what? What you tryna cook?”
“Yeah, a cauldron! I’m about to cook those fuckin’ kids and feed them to their parents, then kill…”
“Eh em,” Killa cleared his throat and motioned towards their kids in the backseat with his head.
Yolo turned to see what he meant and saw her twins sitting wide eyed with shock from her violent outburst. “Fix it! I want you to fix this,” she demanded.
Killa had just turned the signal on to turn on their block, but quickly clicked it off and kept straight instead. He headed straight towards the Long Island Expressway. A few bridges later, Sun read a sign that said ‘Welcome to The Bronx’.
The scenery changed from bleak to bleaker the further they went before finally taking a turn for the worse as Killa pulled into the projects.
“What is this place?” Shyne whined. She wrinkled her nose up as if the place stank.
“This is where your daddy grew up,” Yolo said proudly.
“I wanna grow up here,” Sun declared.
“You wouldn’t grow up here. This place would chew you up and spit you back out,” Killa said as he found a parking spot. He wrote the word ‘Killa’ on a piece of paper and put it in the window before getting out. Yolo furrowed her brow in question and he replied, “Car alarm.”
“Why are we here?” Yolo asked as he led his family through the courtyard. The kids marveled at the lights, camera, and action of the project life.
“To see him,” Killa said and pointed up to the roof.
As usual, Karate Joe was up there practicing his moves.
Karate Joe was an odd little man who wore karate clothes and karate slippers. He walked slightly bowed with his arms folded behind his back. When he spoke, there was slight delay between his words and the movement of his mouth like an old karate movie. He was a bit of an oddball, but he was dangerous as fuck.
“Good idea,” Yolo nodded when she understood. Karate lessons were just what her children needed.
“Ewww! It smells like pee!” Shyne squealed when they stepped into a pissy elevator.
“Smells like you,” Sun teased and cracked up.
“I know you ain’t talking, Carl Lewis!” Yolo snapped in defense of her daughter. “We probably should’ve taken the stairs.”
“You think the elevator is bad,” Killa exclaimed. He knew you could find a body in the stairwell since he’d left plenty of them there himself back in the day. Once they reached the top floor, they got off and walked a flight up to the roof.
“Killa-Sun,” Karate Joe greeted with a bow that Sun found amusing. The boy snickered and gave a bow of his own.
“Sup, yo,” Killa replied, minus the bow. Killa bowed to no man, but he did shake hands. “This is Miss Jackson, Sun, and Shyne.”
Yolo snapped her eyes towards him hearing the greeting that lacked any hint of their family ties. She decided to save it for later since they were on a mission to save their children from any further ass whoopings.
“They need to learn how to fight. Especially him! He runs from fights,” Yolo snarled in her son’s direction.
“Runs!” Karate Joe reeled. He walked over to Sun and looked him up and down before suddenly reaching between his legs and cupping his little package. “No vagina, no run!”
Sun looked to his mother who looked to his father who shrugged his shoulders. Sun nodded up and down and got his package back.
“All children need to learn to fight; especially girls!” Karate Joe said and took a swing at Shyne.
“Stop!” the girl protested as she swatted the blow away. Karate Joe nodded his approval at the block and tried her brother.
“Ouch!” Sun cried when he got popped upside his head. He tried to take cover behind his mother but she wouldn’t let him.
“Un uh! No vagina, no run!” Yolo repeated, pushing him back. “How long to train them?”
“Lethal or decaf?” Karate Joe needed to know. There was a difference between learning karate for self-defense and learning it to fuck people up.
“Lethal!” the parents said in unison.
“Let’s see,” the teacher said as he sized the two youngsters up. “Eight hours a day, every Saturday…her, about a year. Two at the most. Him, ten years!”
“Mmm mph,” Yolo said, shaking her head at her goofy son.
It amazed her how much he looked like his dad, yet acted nothing like him. Not yet anyway, but he would because he was most definitely his father’s son in every way. He was just too young for it to show as of yet.
Karate Joe started with the basics, teaching the twins how to block and deflect blows. Months would be spent on defensive training before they would be allowed to throw a one single punch or kick. Both kids smiled broadly as their first lesson began. Yolo saw it as her opportunity to question Killa and took it.
“So, who exactly is he?” she asked.
“Who him? He’s Karate Joe,” Killa replied as if that summed it all up. He knew she was digging for more information, but wasn’t going to help her.
“I know that, but who is he, exactly?” she asked again through clenched teeth, just like she did with their son.
“Karate Joe is the best karate teacher in New York. He also happens to be Sincerity’s father, but this ain’t about her, me, or you. This is about Sun and Shyne!” he laid out.
“Oh, okay,” she agreed since he’d summed it all up.
****
Killa had to leave during the week so Yolo had to take the twins to their next lesson alone. She took a gun along with her just in case she
spotted Sincerity. That would put an end to living the side chic life.
“Are we ready?” Karate Joe asked when his students arrived on the rooftop.
“Yes,” Sun and Shyne chimed as Yolo stepped aside.
“You too! You here,” Karate Joe demanded of Yolo.
“Me?” the mother asked slightly impudent.
“Yes, you! You must learn too so that you can practice with them during the week,” he explained. This would allow the twins to master a lesson by the time they returned the follow week.
“Makes sense,” she agreed and joined the lesson. By November, they’d mastered blocks and graduated to blows. One day, after a lesson on various strikes, Yolo took a detour on the way home.
“My daddy coming home?” Shyne asked when she recognized the route to the airport.
“Dick rider,” Sun remarked from the backseat. The whole family vied with each other for Killa’s attention, but the girls seemed to get the majority of it.
“What did you say?” Yolo asked her son with a confused smile. She thought she’d heard him, but wasn’t sure.
He misunderstood her smile and therefore made the mistake of repeating himself. “She’s a dick rider. A cock jockey! Always ‘daddy, daddy, my daddy!’” Sun mocked.
“That’s what I thought you said,” Yolo said through the same smile right before she attacked. She gripped the steering wheel with one hand and tried to hit her son with the other.
Sun blocked the blow as he’d been taught and scrambled behind her seat so that she couldn’t reach him. The car swerved violently as she took swipes and swings at him.
“Grab the wheel,” Yolo told her daughter as she unbuckled her seatbelt.
“No, Mommy!” Shyne shouted as if Yolo was crazy. “Your exit is coming up!”
“I got you, buddy! Go to sleep,” Yolo warned as she turned back to the road. Luckily for all, Killa was already standing on the curb at the concourse when she pulled in.
“Sup, guys?” Killa cheered as he jumped into the back with their son. Both Yolo and Sun were out of breath and Shyne was still shook up from them nearly having an accident. “What I miss?”
****
