by Styles, T.
Although the love wasn’t there, Randy did a great job of fashioning himself in his likeness. So much so that Willie could never trust him. Willie was sure that the moment Randy had a chance, he would stab him in the back, and he was correct. Willie had worked for years to build his DC-BASED drug operation from the ground up. When he was arrested for a drug-related offense, he reluctantly turned over power to Randy. Five years later, when he was released from prison, he fully expected to regain his position in the business, but Randy thought otherwise. Randy traded the need for affection for the desire of power, by giving Willie a small piece of real estate before overthrowing him completely. He remembered when Willie told him he could be nothing but an errand boy. So this meeting was just to confirm that he was in power, and would never give it up.
When the black Lincoln Town Car pulled closer, Randy looked at the Baker Boys. He wasn’t sure if he could trust them if something popped off, but for now he didn’t have a choice. But since they were muscular and tall, he felt he could use them for intimidation purposes, if nothing else. “Remember what I said,” Randy advised, pointing at them.
“Don’t say shit unless I ask you to open your mouths. The only thing you need to be saying is yes, and that’s when I address you.”
I should kill this mothafucka right now, Killa thought, placing his hand on his heat.
Slade placed his large hand over his and said, “Not right now.”
With the situation under control, the Baker Boys filed out of the van, and Audio walked around to the passenger side to open Randy’s door. When Randy stepped out, he adjusted his black leather coat and dark shades. Whether it be day or night, Randy never stepped anywhere without them. Some said it was to conceal the hate in his eyes.
A few seconds later, one of Willie’s men opened his car door. Willie floated out of his seat as smoothly as a ’70s pimp, and approached his only child. Three men covered Willie and at first Slade thought he was losing his mind. He was so sure that he blinked several times, just to be sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. When he looked at his brothers and he saw their eyes were wide open too, he knew what he saw was confirmed. Standing behind Willie, holding a shotgun, was their brother Knox. They were about to rush to him when he shook his head, and placed a finger over his lips. Using his eyes, he begged them not to approach. And it took everything in Slade’s power to honor his request.
Chapter 57
“If you think I had anything to do what that shit, call the police.”
—Farah
Farah pressed her warm body against Slade’s, and ran her foot lovingly down the side of his leg. She couldn’t bear to be near him without feeling him in some kind of way. Every part of her body craved him like water to a dry garden. Although the drama in her apartment, and her late-night missions to sooth the urge of violence, prevented them from making love, the bond they were building would last a lifetime. She wasn’t interested in having sex right now anyway, not wanting to turn him off because of her inexperience in the bedroom.
Pulling the covers over their bodies, she rolled on top of him, and looked into his eyes. After everything Randy attempted to do to thwart Farah’s actions to go on with the rest of her life, she was still able to get through to Slade. The night Randy came over and threatened her life, she spent an hour outside of Markee’s door, on her knees, trying to get him to let her in. It took some time, but eventually her plan worked.
“Slade, when you gonna let me in on a little bit of your life? I told you a lot about me,”she embellished, “but I don’t know a whole lot about you.”
“Yes, you do. You know what I like to eat, drink, and what ticks me off, and makes me want to kill.”
“I’m serious. I don’t know where you’re from and things like that.”
“Farah, I got a lot of things going on right now. I’ll start letting you in my life when I clear some things up with my family, and you start letting me in on yours.” He pulled her closer and kissed her lips.
“So you going tit for tat now?”
“I don’t even know what the fuck that means,” he lied.
“Seriously, Slade.” She rolled off of him, eased out of the bed, and walked across the room wearing a pearl-colored short camise. Slade’s dick rose immediately. “I can tell something’s bothering you.”
“What you talking about?”
“Whenever you’re with me, you seem to be somewhere else mentally. It makes me feel like you gonna leave me at anytime. And I been abandoned a lot as a kid. I don’t want to be alone anymore.” She walked to a table, which held snacks and her coffee machine. Then she opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water, and poured it into the pot. Farah made every movement seductive to keep his attention.
“What you doing with all this food in your room? And the fridge?”
“I can’t keep my food out there, they eat it all.” She smiled before opening a packet of coffee and slowly pouring it into the pot. The real reason her room looked like a kitchen was because she was afraid of what Lesa might do to get her back. It was obvious that she was playing dirty by telling Randy her business, so she couldn’t be trusted. Mia and the rest just went for the “I wish the bitch would” method. It didn’t matter that most of her things were in storage, Lesa would find all kinds of reasons to enter the premises, and when she was refused, she’d threaten to call the police. Farah had plans to deal with her on a deadly note the moment she could make her move, but now was not the time. When she tripped over one of Rhonda’s baby shower baskets, she put both of them by the window.
“You want something to drink?”
He raised his hand like he was waiting for a football and said, “Yeah.”
She threw it, and when he caught it she said, “Don’t try to skip the subject, Slade. What is going on with you?”
Slade looked into her eyes, and felt he could reveal more to her than he could to any other person unrelated to him. Twisting the cap off of the water bottle, he took a sip, swallowed, and said, “I been looking for my brother, for months. We finally found him the other night, but for whatever reason, he couldn’t talk to us.”
“Why not?” The smell of fresh coffee filled the room. “Is he mad at you or something?”
“Naw ... it’s deeper than that. For real I’m not sure what’s going on with him. When I saw him, he acted like he couldn’t speak to me.” He placed the bottle on the dresser next to the bed. “Now I gotta talk to my mother, and I know she gonna be fucked up with me. The only reason I’m in DC is to find him. I don’t know what I’m gonna say to her. I never loved a woman stronger than I love my mother, and I hate seeing her hurt.”
Farah didn’t like knowing that another person was out there holding an extra key to his heart. “Just tell her the truth.” She shrugged. “That’s what my grandmother always says anyway.” She opened a pack of white coffee cups and set it on top of the fridge. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“If I tell my mother I had my eyes on my brother and let him get away, she’d probably beat my ass. If there’s one person you don’t try to get over on, Della Baker is it.”
Farah laughed and said, “Wait, your mother still whipping your ass?” She focused back on the brewing coffee. “All that man over there on my bed? I’d pay a ticket to see that shit.”
He grinned. “I’m being straight up. My mother not gonna understand how I let him go. And truthfully I don’t understand either.”
Farah poured a cup of coffee, walked back to the bed, and climbed under the sheets without spilling anything. “I’m sure he gonna get back in contact with you.” She took a few sips, and the bitter taste caused her to squint. “He got your number, right?”
“Yeah. But I don’t have access to that number when I’m out. If I’m not at Markee’s, one of my brothers gotta be there so we can catch his call.” He grabbed the bottle and sipped some more before setting it back down. “He got a cell phone, but he can’t use it for a lot of reasons. So he mostly use
s pay phones and shit like that. That’s why I wanted to talk to him, to at least give him my new cell number. I think I fucked up.”
She set her coffee down on the table and rubbed his shoulder. “Things gonna work out.” She smiled, hoping he’d believe her, even though she didn’t know his situation. She didn’t want his attention anywhere but on her. This thing with his brother was pushing them apart and she needed that to stop. “But when you with me, we have to enjoy our time together. I’m sure your brother would want you to be happy. I mean, that’s how I feel about my sisters and brother anyway.”
Slade felt her comment was a tad bit on the selfish side, but he understood her point of view. “Why were you with that nigga? It’s obvious you’re scared of him.”
She shrugged, and picked her cup up from the table. Slade could smell the scent of her morning breath mixed with the sweet, pungent odor of black coffee, but he was feeling her so he didn’t care.“Randy is different. I was never really feeling him, but when I was a kid, he always took care of me.” She laughed to herself when she recollected a thought. “I remember when these girls were about to jump me, I hid in his car to get away from them. He took me in his house, fed me, and his mother told me I was gonna be his wife. I was a kid back then.” Slade frowned. “But I kind of believed her.”
She put the cup down, slid off the bed, got on her knees, and pulled out a brown box. Then she rustled through old and new journals before pulling out a black leather book. She sat on the edge of the bed, dusted off the cover, and looked at him. “This is what I wrote, when I was a kid.” She turned to the appropriate page:
Farah was on the roof baking in the sun. She was so excited when she saw her skin turning the color of her mother’s. When it got late, she went home and all her family could talk about was how beautiful her chocolate skin was. Later, she went outside to play with the prettiest girl in her school, who was also her best friend, Coconut Elway. Coconut talked about her boyfriend and Farah talked about hers. She said his name was Sam, and his skin was dark as her mother’s, and that he was as handsome as her father. The coolest thing about Sam was that he was as strong as Superman.
Slade’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t believe she wanted to look different, because she was stunning. And then there was the Superman thing, which really tripped him out. He didn’t know anybody stronger than him, and definitely not Randy’s butter-soft ass ... and that made him smile. For so long he hated his condition, and now he was in the company of a woman who appreciated the thing he loathed most about himself. It was almost too weird to be true. “You don’t have that shit in there for real. Do you?”
She slowly handed him the book and said, “Look.”
Slade sat up in the bed and leaned against the headboard. Then he examined the words she just read, and looked over at her. “That’s some crazy shit.”
“You think I’m weird?”
“Fuck no! You willed this shit into existence. My only question is, who the fuck is Sam?”
She punched him on the arm. “Shut up, boy!”
Slade looked at it again and said, “I never saw nothing like this in my life. It’s kind of fucking my head up a little.” When he glanced at the page again, he saw another entry:
And then somebody killed and raped Farah and everybody in the family felt guilty because they didn’t come see her!
“What’s this about?” He pointed. “Why you write this?”
She looked at the passage and was embarrassed at what he saw. Farah snatched the book and tucked it back under the bed. “Please don’t read my shit without asking. I don’t like that,” she said as a little bit of crazy eased out.
He raised his hands and said, “I’m sorry, babes. It wasn’t like that.” He sipped his water again to allow the awkward moment to pass, and to quench his thirst. “So did you think Sam was Randy at first?”
“I wanted him to be. I thought he was, but he isn’t.”
He rubbed her leg, and goose bumps floated on her skin. “He’s obsessed with you. How come?”
“Because I’m light skinned.” She smiled. “He’s into red bones and I fit the bill.” She kissed him. “I had this conversation with my friend Rhonda and my sisters the other day. They don’t believe that most niggas prefer lighter females.”
Slade shrugged, because it didn’t make him a difference either which way. “Yeah ... some dudes be on that shit.”
“Tell the truth, you liked me because I’m red too, right?”
“Ma, you red and it looks good on you, but I’d love you if you were as white as Demi Moore, or as black as my dick.”
Farah didn’t like his response. All her life she was made to feel unworthy because she wasn’t like the rest of her family. It took a long time to embrace the trait that made her different, but she took it to an unhealthy level. She constantly searched the media for reaffirmations that she was better than the darker girls of her race. Violence and feeling superior was how she survived. What Farah really needed was psychological help, but she didn’t know it. “You said love? Is that how you feel about me?”
“I meant ... like.” He swallowed. “Anyway ... I don’t believe in that light skin versus dark skin shit. It’s all a part of the Willie Lynch syndrome.”
“What’s the Willie Lynch syndrome?”
He pulled her toward him, and she placed her head on his chest. “Back in the day, down South, Willie Lynch, a British slave owner in the West Indies, delivered a message to other slave owners in Virginia. He coined the term ‘lynching,’ after his last name.”
“What was the message about?”
“Basically he said his method, which included pitting black people against each other, would last for at least three hundred years, and he was right. He took differences in the slaves, and made them bigger than they were. He said at the top of his list was age, but that it was only because age started with the letter A. He said the second difference he blew up was color.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He suggested they pit the old against the young, the dark-skinned slaves versus the light-skinned slaves. Female against male and male against female. It was done with the intentions of making the slaves depend solely on their masters, and it worked. Years later we free, and people still buy into that shit to this day. It’s dumb. He got into some other shit too, you got to read it to understand it though.”
That was the first time Farah heard of Willie Lynch, and it resonated with her, so she knew it was true. She stopped rubbing his chest, and looked at her light hand on his dark skin. The combination was beautiful, but did it make her better? Farah was confused because her mother made her feel like shit for most of her life. Didn’t she know about this syndrome too? And what about her grandmother, who acted older than Harriet Tubman.
Deciding to skip the subject she said, “So when you find your brother, then what happens?” She sat up in the bed, leaned against the headboard, and grabbed her coffee. “Are you gonna stay with Markee? Because I don’t think he has enough room over there.” She took a few sips, trying to gain the courage to ask him to live with her.
“When I find him, I gotta go back home.”
She looked up at him. “Go home? Why?”
“You know we don’t live here.” He rubbed her leg but she moved it away.
“But ... I thought ...”
“What you thought?”
“I mean, you been here so long that I thought you were staying.”
“Naw.” Slade laughed. “I can’t stand these DC niggas out here. Plus I’m not getting paper. I gotta be where I know how to survive. If I wanted to take you out, I couldn’t even do that shit right now. How you think that makes a nigga feel?”
“I know somebody you can get money from. What if we rob my boyfriend Randy?”
Although he appreciated her go-hardness, it also showed another characteristic he wasn’t sure he liked. “I wouldn’t get you involved in no shit like that.”
“Trust me, I’m involved in more
shit than you know.”
“Not sure what that means, but I do know this ... if I step to him the way I want, he’d be dead.” He looked into her eyes. “I gotta go home and work on getting shit in order. A lot of people are depending on me.”
Farah was so angry that he was leaving that she bypassed everything he said of importance and picked up on the shit she wanted to fight about. “Oh, so you don’t like DC niggas, but you wanna fuck their bitches?”
He frowned. “First off I didn’t fuck you. Second of all, what the fuck are you talking about?”
“I mean, it’s all good to fuck me, but I’m not good enough to stay with.” She was growing angrier, and the blood rushing to her skin caused her to look flushed. “Is that how you move?”
“What you want me to do? Abandon my family in Mississippi?”
It was the first time she heard where he came from. “Well ... what about me?” She touched his arm. “I need you too.”
This shit was blowing Slade. “Let’s take it one step at a time. We might find out we don’t even like each other like that.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and placed her feet flat on the floor. “You played me.” She stood up, grabbed her baby blue robe off the chair, and put it on, pulling the belt tightly around her waist. “I should’ve known something was up with you.”
He laughed. “Fuck you mean, something is up with me?”
“You probably gay, like my sister Mia said.” She giggled. “I’m glad I’m finding out now.” Rejection was eating her up, and reminded her of when she was a sickly girl, confined to bed with no friends. She walked over to the dresser, grabbed her brush, and tamed her wild hair. Slade eased out of bed, and dawdled in her direction. She looked at the reflection of his muscular body in the mirror, and she caught a glimpse of the aggravation on his face. If this man walked out on her she would be fucked up in the head and she knew it.
