Bonded by Blood

by Cash

  Rapheal felt blessed to have two sons willing to hold him down through thick and thin. Shit was real, ‘cause in the hood most niggas don’t fuck with their pops, and vice versa.

  “Have y’all talked to B-Man?” asked Rapheal.

  “Yeah, pop, but he on some other shit,” Khalil confessed.

  Rapheal just nodded his head.

  The other shit B-Man was on at the moment was huntin’ down DeShawn and DeWayne. “Those pussies had the nerve to jack me without masks on! I’ma show em’ I’m not one to be fucked with,” he ranted to Bed-Stuy, who didn’t wanna get involved in any personal beefs. B-Man felt a certain way about that but pushed it to the back of his mind and decided to handle the twins’ dolo.

  They must ain’t checked my street credentials. Niggaz know I’ll set it off! How da fuck these fools gon’ play me? Like they folks don’t live in the hood no more.

  The twins grandmother still lived in Thomasville. B-Man went to the hood and snatched up their granny. He took old girl back to his and Gwen’s crib and made her call her grandsons.

  “When y’all niggaz bring me back my shit I’ll let her go. Put po-po in it and I’m slumpin’ her! Fuck the rest. I’ll go out dumpin’ on they asses too!” B-Man threatened.

  “Just be easy, man. We’ll bring ya shit back, just don’t hurt my granny,” DeShawn said. “You know we don’t fuck wit po-po like dat.”

  “I’m telling you, nigga, if po-po show up on the scene I’m going all the way out, and I’m slumpin’ grandma first!” B-Man vowed.

  “It ain’t gon’ even go down like dat,” DeShawn assured him.

  “Just keep ya cell phone close by; I’ma call you back in a day or two and tell you where to take the money.”

  “Fool, what da fuck you snatch up Mrs. Freeman for?” Q admonished B-Man when he told him what he had done.

  “Khalil, talk to this stupid ass nigga—he done lost his damn mind,” Q said passing the phone to Khalil.

  “What the business, bruh?” Khalil asked.

  “Them niggaz wanna play foul, I can play foul, too,” replied B-Man, disclosing to his brothers for the first time that it was the twins who had jacked him. He had been too embarrassed to admit it before.

  “Fuck it, what’s done is done,” Khalil sighed shaking his head. “How you wanna play this?

  “I’m going all out!” B-Man told him.

  “Is it worth all that?”

  “To me it is.”

  “Damn, bruh, I wish you would’ve had a little patience. We coulda handled this another way. Mrs. Freeman good people.”

  “Y’all ain’t gotta ride. I can handle mines by myself!”

  Click.

  “B-Man be buggin’,” Khalil commented to Q, staring at the blank screen on his BlackBerry.

  “I think that nigga fuckin’ with that glass dick, for real.”

  “Come again?” Khalil said.

  “For real, shawdy. You know the streets talk. I got that from a junkie bitch who say B-Man smoked crack with her and tricked off. Shawdy ain’t gonna lie about no shit like that.

  “Whaaat?”

  “No lie, Khalil—And I heard Gwen on that shit too.”

  “B-Man ain’t going out bad like. I can’t say the same for Gwen. I know shawdy fuck with them woos.”

  “Shid, they fuck wit’ more than woos. Both of ‘em. I done seen a million and one smokers, fam. I’d bet my last breath B-Man done let that bitch turn him out.”

  “You think so?”

  “Is a pig’s pussy pork?”

  Before Khalil and Q could get back in touch with B-Man and assist with his situation, concerning the twins, B-Man moved on his own. He called the twins and told them, “You know that lil’ ho in Thomasville who Q be fuckin’ with?”

  “Corlette?” asked DeShawn.

  “Yeah. Drop the shit off at her crib. When I know it’s all there, I’ll release ya grandmother.”

  B-Man headed over to Corlette’s house to advise her of the agreement, but he didn’t tell her the whole story.

  Corlette asked, “Why DeWayne and DeShawn gon’ drop something off over here? I don’t mess with them like that.”

  “It’s just business, lil’ mama. Just do me this one favor. Q know how it’s going down,” he lied.

  Later that evening, Corlette called B-Man to let him know that the twins had dropped off some money and jewels for him. Miss Jean, Corlette’s money-hungry moms, agreed to meet B-Man with the guap since he offered to pay two hundred and fifty dollars.

  B-Man met Miss Jean at a convenience store a few blocks from his crib. Once he was back at the crib, and had assured himself that all his shit had been returned, B-Man dropped the twins’ grandmother off on the other side of town. He’d made her lie down on the floor, in the back of his Chevy, so that she wouldn’t know where he lived, the same way he had brought her there.

  When Q found out what B-Man had done he snapped. “Nigga, why you involve my shawdy in that shit?” Q pushed his way into B-Man’s apartment. Khalil was on his heels.

  “M.O.B. nigga!” B-Man said.

  Q scooped B-Man up and body slammed him. Dayum, this nigga light as fuck, he thought as he tussled with his brother.

  “Stop ‘em, Khalil,” cried Gwen, who was looking a hot mess.

  “Let ‘em get it off they chest,” Khalil said.

  “They gon’ break something!”

  Khalil ignored her. As he watched his brothers tussle, he was eyeing Gwen in his peripheral, thinking she was already broke the fuck up, why worry about the furniture.

  Q got the best of B-Man, for the first time that Khalil could recall.

  “What nigga? What? You can’t fuck with this no more!” boasted Q after Khalil separated them.

  Embarrassed at getting his ass whooped in front of his woman, B-Man hauled off and punched Q dead in the eye, violating the pact the brothers had made way back. Q’s eye swelled up instantaneously.

  “Oh, you doing it like dat, nigga?” he spat at B-Man.

  Then his hand went to his waist.

  Khalil tried to grab Q’s arm.

  Gwen screamed just as the gun went off!

  The single shot echoed in their ears. B-Man fell to the floor clutching his leg.

  “Shit, man! Shit! What the fuck wrong with y’all? We family!” Khalil screamed.

  He snatched the nine from Q and shoved him in the chest with two hands.

  “You trippin’, shawdy!” he said, pushing Q again, hard. Then he went to B-Man.

  “Damn, bruh, we gon’ have to take you to the hospital. Ain’t this some shit!” he was shaking his head in disbelief. “Q, you dead the fuck wrong!”

  “I’ma kill dat nigga!” B-Man winced, holding his leg and rocking back and forth.

  Gwen jumped in Q’s face. “What the fuck you do that for?”

  “Back up out my grill, bitch!” Q barked.

  Gwen glared at Q. “I’m calling the police!”

  “No, you not,” Khalil interjected sternly. “This family BI, Gwen. We gon’ handle this, me and my brothers.”

  Anger was etched on Khalil’s face. He had seen this shit bubbling between B-Man and Q ever since he came home from the joint, but he never thought it would reach this level.

  “What happened to bonded by blood? Huh?” he asked.

  Q wasn’t saying nothing, but he was already regretting what he’d just done.

  “My bad, shawdy. For real, though,” he finally said, directing his apology to B-Man.

  “Fuck dat! Y’all niggas ain’t my fam, and Rapheal ain’t my daddy! Ask him, he’ll tell you.”

  Khalil and Q weren’t giving any weight to B-Man’s words. He was mad, talking out of his head.

  “And Q, while you riding around acting like you The Last Kingpin, nigga, I was running dick up in ya lil’ wifey! Yeah, ask Persia what’s up with that. Real talk, bitch nigga!”

  Q’s mouth dropped open and his brows furrowed. His face twitched with fury.

  Khalil said,
“Go on home, shawdy. Me and Gwen will take B-Man to the hospital. You done fucked up, bruh. Damn!”

  Q bounced. Khalil and Gwen helped B-Man out to his Chevy drop and eased him into the back seat. Several towels were around his thigh to catch the blood from the gunshot wound. B-Man was talking shit, still stressing that Khalil and Q wasn’t his fam, and telling Khalil, “I don’t need your fucking help, nigga.”

  Khalil let B-Man’s words bounce right off him. Whatever B-Man was stressin’, Khalil’s love for his brother was bigger than that bullshit.

  While Khalil was trying to get B-Man settled on the back seat of the car, he noticed a baby doll wrapped in a real baby’s blanket. Elisse said something about that bitch that set up the robbery carrying a doll, he recalled.

  Q walked into the condo with a mean unit on his face. B-Man’s words played in his mind. I was running dick up in ya lil’ wifey . . . Yeah, ask Persia what’s up with that . . . Real talk, bitch nigga! Q wanted to believe that his brother was lying, saying crazy shit just to hurt him, like that shit about Rapheal not being B-Man’s pops.

  In a way, Q was glad Persia wasn’t at home; he didn’t wanna confront her with accusations. He smoked a Newport, showered, changed clothes, and then drove to Georgia Baptist Hospital to see Rapheal. Immediately after taking a seat at his pop’s bedside, Q questioned him about B-Man’s claim. Rapheal confirmed that he was not B-Man’s biological father.

  “Damn, pop, why you or Black Girl ain’t tell us,” said Q, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “After your mama had Khalil I went to the joint to serve a short bid on some misdemeanor shit. While I was away Black Girl hooked up with a square nigga. She came to visit me and told me that she was gettin’ out of the life, no more prostituting. By the time I got out six months later, she was pregnant by the dude, but she wanted to come back to me. The nigga had caught feelings and didn’t wanna let go so I had to do what I had to do. Don’t even ask what I did because you already know. After that was handled, I accepted ya mama back and tried to accept B-Man as my own. Khalil was too young to remember and you was still in my nut sac,” explained Rapheal.

  The story fucked Q’s head up, but it explained why B-Man didn’t really resemble him and Khalil. They had the same mother, but B-Man had a different pops.

  “I wonder how B-Man found out,” Q said.

  “Black Girl probably told him,” guessed Rapheal. “She always said she would tell him one day.”

  “Dayum!” Rapheal said, “Your mama would be real hurt if she was alive to see how y’all beefin’ with each other. She probably turning over in her grave.”

  “Yeah, I know, pop. I don’t know why I did that stupid shit.”

  “Y’all still blood brothers—y’all got the same mama. Go make up with your brother,” suggested Rapheal, keeping another secret to himself.

  Q didn’t know which hospital Khalil had taken B-Man to, he’d find out later then go make peace with his fam. He was feeling so bad about wettin’ his brother, the fact that B-Man had blacked his eye didn’t even matter. Damn! What the fuck I shoot him for? Q was chastising himself as he drove home. Shit was fucked up, he had shot his own brother, Khalil was heated at him, and he had just found out that it was true that Rapheal wasn’t B-Man’s pop. And that wasn’t the least of it.

  The Newport dangled from the corner of Q’s mouth as he called Persia on her cell phone.

  “Where you at?” he asked as soon as she answered.

  “At the hair salon,” Persia replied. “What’s wrong? You sound upset.”

  “Come home, A-fuckin’-SAP!”

  “What’s going on, baby?”

  “Come home, now!”

  Persia came through the door with an attitude.

  “What’s the big emergency?” she spewed, setting her Hermes bag down on the cocktail table.

  With her hair freshly done she looked delicious. But Q was now seeing past her beauty and sex appeal.

  “What happened to your eye, boo?” she asked, startled when Q came out of the master bedroom, where he’d been packing her clothes. “Oh my god, baby, what happened?”

  “You fucked with my brother, huh?”

  His tone was cyanide.

  The unexpected question caused Persia to damn near lose her breath. In those few seconds of silence, any slight chance that the accusation wasn’t true evaporated like a drop of water in the desert’s sand.

  “What are you talking about?” Persia tried, to buy time to formulate a lie.

  Whap!

  Q slapped wifey so hard her pearly white teeth rattled.

  “Don’t even fix your mouth to try to lie about it, bitch!” Q backhanded Persia, knocking her on her ass. She balled into a knot and cried and screamed her head off.

  “Low down, rat bitch. I oughta kill you!” Whap. “I treat you like a queen . . . ” Whap! “ . . . buy you a new whip, clothes, jewels . . . ” Whap! “ . . . and you fuck my muthafuckin’ brother!” Whap! Whap! Whap!

  Q was pummeling her with his fist, out of control in his fury of heartbreak. He was punching Persia in the face, the shoulders, the back of her head, any spot she left unprotected. Tears were streaming down his face by the time he caught himself and stopped.

  “Get your shit and kick rocks, ho!” he spat, standing over her, chest heaving in and out.

  Persia lay curled up on the living room floor. Her freshly done hair was all over head in a tangled mess. She tasted blood from a busted lip and her head throbbed. Her body rocked with sobs.

  “When I get back you better be gone, bitch. You can take all the clothes and shit I bought. Fuck dat shit. I don’t want none of it left here to remind me of your dirty ass. Just leave my door keys!”

  He stormed out the door, slamming it behind him.

  B-Man was lying in a hospital bed, with his leg elevated and heavily bandaged. Khalil had met Q right outside the doorway as he came toward the room. They dapped hands and gave each other a brotherly hug.

  Q whispered what Rapheal had confirmed. Khalil took the news in stride. It didn’t matter. In his eyes, they all were still fam as much as before the revelation.

  “So how is he?” Q asked about B-Man’s condition.

  “He good, but he heated as a muthafucka. Ain’t said a word to me since he came out of surgery,” replied Khalil in a hushed tone so that their voices wouldn’t carry into the room where Gwen was at B-Man’s bedside.

  “I’m going inside to see him,” Q said as one of the surgical doctors left out of the room.

  “He ain’t gon’ wanna see you,” warned Khalil.

  “I know. But I wanna see him.”

  “Brace yaself then, ‘cause you know how stubborn B-Man is.”

  “It don’t matter. I was wrong to take it that far, so he has the right to go off on me. I’m not even mad about him and Persia. The bitch was poison anyway,” conceded Q as he stepped inside B-Man’s room.

  Gwen started grillin’ Q as soon as he entered the room. He wasn’t studyin’ her junkie ass, though. What was between fam was between fam.

  “Gwen, step out in the hallway for a minute, let me talk to my brother,” Q said.

  “You wanna talk to him, baby?” she asked B-Man, not budging.

  “I ain’t got nothin’ to say to that nigga—him or Khalil.”

  The bitterness in B-Man’s voice was thick, as if it had been coagulating for years. “Them niggas ain’t my brothers!”

  “Step out the room, Gwen,” Khalil firmly instructed. “This family business. I ain’t in no mood to tongue wrestle.”

  Reluctantly, Gwen got her itty-bitty ass up and stepped out into the hall.

  “I’ll be right outside the door,” she said over her frail shoulder.

  Khalil closed the door.

  “Check it, shawdy,” began Q with remorse in his voice. “My bad, for real, bruh. Man, I wish I could take that slug back, undo that and whatever it is I’ve done to make shit so bad between us. For real, fam . . . I love you, nigga. Why we always
beefin’, shawdy?”

  B-Man didn’t respond.

  Q continued, “Just tell me what I gotta do to make shit right with us again. What, bruh, you still salty ‘cause I didn’t split them bricks more evenly between the three of us? ‘Cause all the bricks in the world ain’t more important to me than you and Khalil. Real talk, you can have all that shit. Them thangs don’t mean more to me than fam do, shawdy. I ain’t even salty with you’ bout Persia, pimp. A ho gon’ be a ho; if it hadn’t been you it woulda been some other nigga. The bitch just a rat. It’s good I found that out now instead of later, before I wifed that bitch for real.”

  “Real talk,” Khalil intoned. “Blood thicker than water. And about this thing with Rapheal, man, that don’t change shit between the three of us. So what? Just ‘cause Rapheal ain’t ya biological, he the only pops you know. The three of us still came out the same coochie.”

  “Y’all niggas through?” B-Man finally spoke. “Cause if so, y’all can get da fuck up outta here. We ain’t brothers. We ain’t fam. We ain’t nothin’! Not as far as I’m concerned.”

  “You don’t mean that, bruh,” said Khalil.

  “Shid, I mean every word I just said. As for you Q, nigga you betta stay da fuck outta my way, ‘cause if we ever bump heads again I’ma dump on ya ass like I’d do any other nigga.”

  Chapter Twenty two

  Because family BI had him stressed, Khalil had been short tempered with his hoes lately. Last week he had pimp smacked the shit out of Sinnamon, for nothing really. When he realized that he was in the wrong, he simply said, “Charge it to the game, ho,” and left it at that.

  Rayne and Cha Cha was getting on his last nerve with their petty ass bickering back and forth. He had made them both stand in opposite corners of the living room, their noses pressed against the wall, like two school children. Then he had them write, “I will not bicker with my wife-in-law”, one thousand times each.

  “Y’all wanna act like little children, well, that’s how I’ma treat you, unnastand?” he explained.

  “Yes, daddy,” Cha Cha replied, obediently finding paper and pen and doing as she was told.

  “Khalil, let me see you in the bedroom,” Rayne requested. “We need to talk.”