Street Divas

by De'nesha Diamond

  “Hold up. Give me a sec.” Drey pants as his softening dick slips and slides around my pussy. “Is this it?” he asks, jamming his dick against my clit.

  “Nah, nigga.” I pop him on the shoulder. We’ve been at this shit for twenty minutes. My shit is drying up. My buzz is halfway gone, and I’m starting to get the munchies. He’s going to have to roll my ass through somebody’s drive-through before he takes me home. “Ain’t you done this shit before? Can’t you tell that ain’t a muthafuckin’ hole?” I ask.

  “Shit. Hold on.” Drey fumbles around some more. “I’m going to get this shit. You know my ass is high as fuck—and it’s dark in this muthafucka, too. Sheeiiit.” He rams his shit forward, and a surge of pain has my ass jumping higher up on these hard-ass lockers.

  “Oww.” I slap him on the back of his head. “That’s the wrong damn hole, you dumbass.” Tired of the shit, I shove him away and pull my panties back in place. “Forget it. I’m out.”

  “What?”

  Smoothing my dress back down, I march toward the door. To no surprise, Drey’s desperate ass snatches me back by my hand and gets up in my face.

  “Whoa. Slow down, baby. Where are you going?” His big lips stretch into a wide cheese-eating grin. “You promised me some pussy if I took you to this bullshit prom.”

  My face nearly twists off. “I ain’t promised you no such damn thing. I just said I’d like to go. If you didn’t want to take me, trust and believe that another nigga would have.” He knows that I’m speaking the truth, too. I may be pocket size, but this year I got tits and ass with a tiny little waist. Whenever I walk by, more and more nigga’s tongues be rolling out their damn heads. Sometimes even in front of their girlfriends. And what I do? Come here with this broke-ass nigga. “You see any other nigga up in here trying to get their fuck on in this stank-ass locker room?”

  “Nah. That’s why this shit is perfect. We got the whole place to ourselves, and we can still hear the music playing downstairs. And lookie over here.” He releases me and runs over to one of the lockers.

  I fold my arms as I watch him fiddle with the combination lock. After opening the muthafucka, he reaches inside and pulls out a bottle of MD 20/20 red grape. “You have got to be shitting me.”

  “What? This is the shit right here.”

  “That cheap bullshit? Negro, please. Nobody drinks that bullshit other than bums and winos.”

  “Don’t trip. I got some Thunderbird, too.” Drey reaches back into the locker and pulls out the other bottle. “Sheeiit. We’re going to toss it up tonight.”

  “Drey, that shit ain’t going to do nothing but tear up the lining in my stomach. Your ass couldn’t even spring for no Grey Goose or Hpnotiq?”

  “Tsk.” Drey rolls his eyes as he crosses over to me. “C’mon now. Don’t get all bougie on me. Trust and believe this shit is as good, and it’s going to get the job done.” He tucks both bottles under one arm and then makes a grab for one of my hands.

  I pull my shit back and turn for the door. “Um. No. I’m out.” Bolting out of the locker room, I try to wrap my brain around how fucked up this night is turning out while blocking out Drey storming up behind me.

  “You’re just going to roll out?”

  “Later,” I say, bolting back into the gym. Now I got to beg some muthafucka for a ride back to my grandma’s crib. That shit is going to be hard since everyone is all grinding on each other as foreplay or getting ready to head out to the hotels to sweat out their girl’s perms and weaves. Who in the hell is going to want a third wheel?

  Drey keeps whining like a bitch behind me. “After all the money I spent on you tonight? This is how you act? Damn, girl. You’re rude as hell.”

  “Whatever, broke muthafucka. You going to spend five dollars on some alcohol and call that money? You probably found that shit in between the cushions of your momma’s damn couch.” I thread through the crowd, trying to decide who I should hit up for a ride.

  “Essence!”

  “Get away from me with that bullshit.” I stop in the middle of the floor and look around. There’s got to be somebody up in this muthafucka who can help a sister out.

  “Now what are you going to do? Your girl Ta’Shara has already left with that scabby crab Profit. How you getting home?” He reaches around me and slides a hand down to my crotch for a quick squeeze.

  I spin around with fire boiling my blood. “Try that slick shit again and see if your ass don’t be missing an arm next damn time.”

  “Spit that shit if you want. You ain’t doing nothing but getting my dick hard.”

  “Now you just need to find a bitch who’s willing to draw you a damn map so you can find a hole to stick it in. Me? I got better shit to do—like hook up with a nigga who knows what the fuck to do with pussy.”

  He snatches me by the arm. “Keep your fucking voice down.” Drey looks around and catches a few eyeballs aimed our way. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT?”

  Niggas laugh dead in his face. Shit. He ain’t nobody major. Just a corner boy who can get you 10 percent off at Foot Locker.

  Drey’s grip tightens.

  “Let go.” I snatch my arm and glare up at his ass. I ain’t scared. My being short is an advantage. I can tear up a nigga’s kneecaps before he even knows what hit his ass.

  “You know what? Fuck it. You do you.”

  “Believe that shit.” I turn away, ready to storm out of this muthafucka. Shit. All I have to do is call up a cab and I’ll be home to peep out BET: Uncut before midnight. Sad muthafuckin’ way to spend a Saturday night. I reach for my purse that should be looped around my shoulder but grasp air. “Shit.” Turning back around, I damn near crash into Drey’s chest.

  “What? Whatcha looking for?” he asks, and then holds up my purse. “You looking for this?”

  “Boy, give me my shit back.” I make a swipe for it, but Drey pulls it up higher so that my five-foot-two frame can’t reach it.

  “Since I brought you, you might as well let me take you home.”

  “Ain’t going to happen, broke ass.”

  “All right. Keep clowning and I’m going to stop being a gentleman.”

  “Nigga, who the fuck you think you’re talking to?” I rake my eyes up and down his six-foot-three frame. “Newsflash, Einstein. A gentleman wouldn’t have pulled that bullshit up in the boys’ locker room with some fucking Mad Dog and Thunderbird whiskey. Shit, I think my great-great-great-grandfather used to drink that bullshit. I’m a fucking street diva, not some twenty-dollar trick, nigga. I deserve to be treated with some muthafuckin’ respect.”

  “Stop breaking my balls and loosen the fuck up. Why the hell should I break off a chunk of my hard-earned shit for some pussy I’m only going to be up in for a couple of minutes?”

  “Nigga, what?” Cobra-necking, I can’t stop my eyes from rolling. “Sheeiit. If you’re going to be nutting that damn fast, then you need to go ahead and step off the curb.”

  “Don’t worry. I would’ve made sure that you came first.” Drey flicked his tongue out, and the damn thing rolled out past his damn chin. My eyes perk up. Maybe this broke nigga actually has a hidden talent.

  “All right. Fine.” My eyes do another good roll. “Take me home. If you keep your mouth shut, I might let you get a taste. If it turns out that you know how to work that shit, I’ll let you try to hit again.”

  Drey’s eyes light up, his anger a distant memory. “For real?”

  “For real. Now give me my purse and bring your ass on over here before I change my fuckin’ mind.” He hands me my shit, and I storm away, rolling my eyes. I’m going to let him eat my pussy, and I don’t care if the muthafucka has me coming so hard I see Jesus—he ain’t getting another chance to put that limp dick anywhere near my shit.

  His smile spreads wider. “I thought that you might see things my way.” He offers me his arm as if that’s somehow going to make me forget that he tried to get me twisted off some fucking MD 20/20.

  “C’mon before I c
hange my fuckin’ mind,” I say, grabbing his hand and dragging him toward the exit. Out back, Khaled and his boys are tossing dice and smoking some serious shit that is forming muthafuckin’ green clouds. “Goddamn,” I saying, fanning that shit away from my face. No way anybody is going to convince me that shit ain’t fucking up niggas’ lungs. “What the fuck is that shit? Toxic waste?”

  “Why?” Khaled barks, pulling his full frame up and twisting his face. “You plan on snitching, bitch?”

  Quick as lightning, a pistol appears in Drey’s hand and he’s all up on Khaled like a soldier on the front line. “What you getting all swoll for, crab? My lady asked you a muthafuckin’ question!”

  Khaled laughs. “I ain’t got to answer to your bitch!” He barely gets that last word out before Drey flips his gun and then swings that muthafucka across Khaled’s jaw like a golf club. There’s a loud crack, and Khaled hits the pavement like someone yelled, “Timber!”

  The niggas Khaled was out here playing dice with jump up like a group of jack-in-the-boxes, but instead of coming to their homey’s aid, they cover their mouths and crack the fuck up. Then one hollers to grab Khaled’s shit and the muthafucka gets jacked while he’s out cold.

  Hell, I can’t help but laugh my damn self.

  Drey shakes his head and then wraps his arm around my waist. “C’mon. Muthafucka should be happy I didn’t put a couple bullets through his head, talking to me out the side of his neck.”

  I slide into the passenger side of his rusted-out ’72 Buick Electra. The car would be dope if Drey spread some cheese and got his shit hooked up. As it is, big gray clouds of smoke choke their way out of the tailpipe the minute the car turns over. There’s also the stench of burning oil seeping through the vents. I ain’t going to say shit. I want to get the fuck home as fast as I can.

  Drey rolls his big-ass car through the school’s parking lot, and when it comes time to make a right out onto the main street, he has to manually move the blinker lever up and down in order for his turn signal to work. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes from rolling to the back of my head. I’m soooo over this shit.

  He reaches over to the radio and blasts Lil Wayne’s latest joint. But hell, even his speakers are all fucked up. Rattling and buzzing. Shit. What kind of nigga don’t even keep his sound system on point?

  “So where you want to serve up some of that good pussy at?”

  “Take me home.”

  “What? You’re going to let me sneak into your grandmomma’s crib? Ain’t you scared you’re going to wake her up?”

  “Nah, nigga. You can’t come up in her spot. You can hit the lights in the driveway or some shit.”

  He cracks up. “Sho’nuff? You want me to eat you out in your grandmomma’s driveway?”

  “Not if you don’t shut the fuck up and drive!”

  “A’ight.” He raises his hands off the steering wheel for a second, and the car starts to pull right. “I got to get the alignment fixed on Baby Girl,” he says, reaching up and rubbing on the dashboard.

  I swear to God this nigga could fuck up a wet dream. Now I ain’t giving this nigga nothing. He can kiss my black ass and go find himself a chicken head. But hell. Even some cracked-out pussy is too good for his ass.

  “What the hell is going on up here?” Drey asks, reaching over and mercifully turning down his fucked-up system.

  A whole team of police cars with their blue strobes light up the whole damn street.

  “Some nigga got capped,” Drey says, rubbernecking.

  “That shit ain’t new,” I say, bored. I hope this don’t mean they’re going to hold our asses up on this street all night. Just when I say that, I see two cops directing traffic to roll down alternate side streets. Thank God.

  Drey eases off the brake while his tailpipe coughs up some more smoke. That shit is drifting toward the front of the car now, completing my humiliation as people twist their faces and look over at us. Drey is not embarrassed. He’s still too busy trying to peek past the yellow crime-scene tape to see if he can recognize the nigga being white-chalked.

  “Is that nigga in a tux?”

  That catches my attention. I pop up in my seat and try to get a good look myself. “I wonder who it is.”

  Bang. Bang.

  Drey and I jump. A cop standing to the side of the car glares at Drey. “Keep this polluting piece of shit moving!”

  “Damn, man. Careful before you fuck up my ride,” Drey barks.

  Both me and the cop give him an incredulous look. How can anybody fuck his shit up worse than it already is? This damn contraption looks and sounds like it has less than a mile before it just flat-out dies on our asses.

  “I’m moving. I’m moving,” Drey says when it looks like the cop is going to hit the car again. “These goddamn pigs. I swear I can’t stand their asses,” he complains, but finally heads off the main road.

  I go back to ignoring his ass and wondering who’s lying in the street. I don’t know why, but Profit flashes in my head. Him and Ta’Shara took a big chance going to the prom together. It ain’t like there were a whole lot of people happy to see them all hugged up tonight, and isn’t this the route to the Peabody Hotel? There’s a weird flutter in my gut. I grab my purse and dig out my cell phone.

  “Who you calling?”

  “None of your fucking business. Just drive.”

  “Damn, girl. Your mouth . . .” Drey shakes his head. “Rude as fuck.”

  “Whatever.” I hit Ta’Shara’s cell and it seems like the muthafucka rings forever before I’m transferred to her voice mail. “Uh, yeah. Shara, this is E. Look, um, I’m sure you and your boy are kicking it and everything, but I, um, I just wanted to make sure that you two made it to the hotel all right.” I swivel around in my seat, trying to see past the yellow tape, but the shit is now out of view. “I’m probably trippin’, but, um, there is some shit going down not too far from your hotel, and I just wanted to check in.” Now that I’ve put it out there, I kind of feel stupid. “Anyway, call me when you get this message.”

  After disconnecting the call, I hold the phone and wait for the knots in my stomach to unwind.

  They don’t.

  I dial her number again. This time I start chewing my nails as I listen to the phone ring again. “C’mon, c’mon. Pick up.”

  Drey glances over at me. “What? You really think that shit back there has something to do with your girl?”

  “God. I hope not.”

  Twenty minutes later, Drey squints and then leans over his steering wheel. “What the fuck is that?”

  I hear the beep signaling me to leave a message on Ta’Shara’s phone again as I glance up to see what has caught Drey’s attention. My mouth falls open, but I’m unable to speak as I see a slouched female, draped in a bloody robe, trembling and shaking as she half walks and half stumbles toward my house.

  “Yo,” Drey says, pointing. “Ain’t that your girl, Ta’Shara, right there?”

  6

  Lucifer

  I hate hospitals. I always have.

  Besides being filled with a bunch of nosy muthafuckas who press you for the who, what, and why of shit, they’re also greedy as fuck. All they want to know is how they gonna get paid. No money and they’ll slap Band-Aids on your bullet holes and park your ass in the morgue when you finish bleeding out. I fail to see how their hustle is any different than the niggas out on the street.

  Frankly, I would have liked nothing more than to take another trip out to Dr. Cleveland’s private residence, but the amount of bullet holes Profit has is going to require a real operating table. Under normal circumstances, our asses would have done a drop-and-roll outside the emergency room to avoid playing twenty questions.

  But Profit isn’t a normal foot soldier. He’s Mason’s brother. His heart. There’s nothing that he won’t do for this lil nigga. With Profit being all fresh and new in the Vice Lord family, he hasn’t been able to make a name for himself yet, but what most niggas do know about him is that he has f
uckin’ heart. The way he fought in his initiation fight is still being talked about among plenty of niggas up and down the ranks. No matter how hard Tombstone threw those punches, Profit refused to go down. And now he’s looking like Swiss cheese and is still breathing? If he does survive this shit, he’s going to have to change his street name from Profit to Jesus Christ because the brothah refuses to die.

  The minute we pull up outside the emergency room, we shout that we need help. Two paramedics who are heading back toward a parked ambulance stop in their tracks while an old flashlight cop posted at the entrance glances over timidly. Not until we shove the hatch up and reveal Profit’s bullet-riddled body do they all launch into action.

  “What happened?” one of them asks.

  “What does it look like?” I snap, and then glance to my side to see my brother giving me one of those looks that says I told you so. He was in favor of the drop-and-roll solution.

  “Did you see what happened?” one of the paramedics presses as he helps transfer Profit onto a gurney.

  “No.”

  “We have a pulse,” the other paramedic announces.

  My shoulders slump heavily. At least Profit didn’t croak while he was under my care. We all take off into the hospital where an impressive number of people rush toward the gurney. IV bags, needles, nurses, and doctors pop up out of thin air. They all move in a weird, frenzied precision like they do on TV.

  I stop jogging behind the gurney once they push through a double door, leading toward surgery. After that, I suck in a couple of deep breaths to calm my rattled nerves. This shit is in God’s hands now. But as I stand, watching the swinging doors, a memory stirs. Just snatches at first. I was almost eight years old, standing in a hospital hallway just like this one while my mother wailed to Jesus not to let my father die on us. I knew that he was already gone. I had seen that light in his eyes vanish. Bishop cried, too, but not all hysterical like our Momma. His tears were silent as they rolled down his chubby face.