by K'wan
“God, I miss you,” she sobbed.
“I miss you too, ma,” he replied. “More than you can imagine, Satin.” His form wavered then became solid again. “Satin, you gotta go back, ma.”
With tear-filled eyes she looked up at him. “I know, baby, but I can come back tomorrow, or the day after.”
He looked down at his All Stars before turning back to Satin. “No, baby, I mean you gotta wake up. This ain’t no life for you, and the more you come here the more of yourself you lose. I can’t let you end up like me.” He motioned toward his body, which was starting to take on the clarity of a bootleg movie.
“I won’t leave you, Lou-Loc.” She tried to grab hold of his Dickies shirt, but her fingers passed right through. “Why can’t I stay here with you?”
“Because you gotta water the seed, ma.” He tried to touch her stomach, but his body was rapidly losing substance.
“Water the seed, what are you talking about?” she asked his fading form.
“You can’t sleep anymore, Satin, sleep is for the dead. This place”-he motioned at the fading scenery around him-“it ain’t for you, baby. Life is for you.”
“Baby, a life without you ain’t a life,” she pleaded. “I wanna stay here with you, Lou-Loc. Just about everybody I ever loved is dead, ain’t nothing out there for me. I don’t wanna lose you too.”
“Baby, as long as you water the seed you can never lose me, don’t forget that,” he said before his form faded completely.
SATIN AWOKE with a start. Her eyes darted around the room, searching for the mountains and the waterfall, but there were only the dull hospital walls, and the morning sun coming through the picture window. Lou-Loc’s words again rang through her mind and the meaning suddenly became clear. With a trembling hand Satin touched her stomach and felt the faintest hint of a flutter.
chapter 7
AS SOON as Sharell stepped off the elevator she heard the shouts and sounds of furniture being overturned. A burly orderly rushed past her so swiftly that he almost knocked her over. Down the hall she saw a small cluster of people gathered around Satin’s room. An orderly stepped inside, but immediately backpedaled out, followed by a lamp, which shattered against the hallway wall.
“What’s going on here?” Sharell asked as she approached the duty nurse. Her youthful face wore a worried expression.
“Step back please, miss, we’re dealing with a situation,” the nurse told her as she pulled a syringe from her pocket along with a small glass bottle. Her hands were shaking so bad that she almost dropped the bottle when she tried to slip the needle through the corked top.
“I’m Sharell Baker, and that’s my sister in there.” Sharell tried to step around the nurse so that she could see into the room, but one of the orderlies blocked her path. He was a thick-necked cat whose arm and neck were covered in tattoos.
“I can’t let you in there, ma’am,” he said in a bass voice. “It’s too dangerous. Ms. Angelino attacked one of my people a few minutes ago.” He motioned to the splatters of blood on the floor that she hadn’t noticed before.
“Attacked an orderly? The last time I was here she could barely feed herself, let alone be a danger to anyone.” Sharell looked from the orderly to the nurse for an explanation.
“Tell that to the young man who’s downstairs getting his hand examined.” The nurse folded her arms over her small breasts. “Ms. Angelino came out of her stupor some time this morning and when the orderly went in to administer her medication she attacked him with a pencil.”
“Jesus.” Sharell covered her mouth in shock.
“Ms. Baker, I’m just as shocked as you are, but it still doesn’t change the fact that she’s become a danger to herself and my staff. She has to be sedated.” She held up the syringe that was now filled with a greenish fluid.
“Wait, can I try and talk to her first?” Sharell asked.
“Can’t do it, Ms.,” the tattooed orderly spoke up. “If you were to go in there and something happened we’d be held responsible, and I ain’t trying to lose my job.” He folded his arms, letting her know that it was nonnegotiable. It was just then that she spotted the six-pointed star tattooed on his elbow, with two numbers crowning it.
“Can I speak with you for a minute… in private?” Sharell asked politely. The orderly gave her a distrustful look, but agreed to hear her out.
“Make it quick lady,” he said, leading her off to the side. The nurse gave him a look, but he motioned that he had it under control. “What’s up?” he asked when they were out of earshot.
“Where’re you from?” Sharell asked, slipping into the venacular she’d often heard Gutter use.
He gave her a quizzical look. “The Bronx, why?”
“Young man, I’m not here to give you grief or jeopardize your job, but I really don’t have time to play. Now, where’re you from?” She nodded toward the tattoo.
The orderly absently placed his hand over the tattoo. “Seven-Duce gangster, but I’m not in the life anymore,” he said just above a whisper. She could clearly see he was lying, but it wasn’t her place to judge.
“Listen, have you ever heard of Gutter?” she asked.
The orderly lowered his eyes. “Yeah.”
“That’s my husband, and the woman in there is his sister.”
The man snapped his head up and looked at her with fear-filled eyes. “Listen, lady, I don’t want any problems, I’m just trying to do my job.” He raised his hands in surrender.
“I don’t doubt that, but like I said, that’s Gutter’s family, and I’d hate to think how he’d feel if something happened that could’ve potentially been stopped.” She looked him directly in the eye. “Just give me a minute to see if I can calm her down before y’all run up in there. I’d look at it as a personal favor.”
The orderly stood there and pondered it for a minute. Everyone, Crip or Blood, knew just who Gutter was and what he was about. If the patient truly was Gutter’s family and something happened to her there was no doubt in his mind that he was a dead man walking. Though he valued his job, he valued his life more.
“A’ight,” he told her. The orderly looked over at the nurse and motioned that it was okay to let Sharell in. “You got five minutes, and we do what we gotta do if she tweaks again,” he warned.
“Thank you so much.” She took one of his massive hands in hers. Sharell hurried to the doorway only to be stopped by the nurse.
“Terrence, are you crazy?” she shouted at the orderly. “If somebody finds out we let her in there all our asses are gonna be fired! I got kids to feed and I need my job.”
“Trish”-he took her firmly by the arm and moved her out of Sharell’s way-“I got this. Give her a minute.” Trish started to protest, but the warning look Terrence gave her kept her silent. Reluctantly she allowed Sharell to enter the room.
Sharell stepped around them and entered the room. She was totally taken aback when she saw Satin, pacing near the window, with a crazed look in her eyes and a bloody pencil in her hand. “Satin?” Sharell called to her.
“I want to go home!” she shouted. “What am I doing here? Why won’t they let me go home?”
“Satin, calm down baby. I’m here,” Sharell said, stepping closer, but not close enough to taste the end of the pencil.
Satin turned her animal-like glare on Sharell. For a minute it looked like she was going to attack, but her eyes softened when she recognized Gutter’s girlfriend. “Sharell, why are they keeping me here? Why won’t they let me go home?”
“Baby, you’re sick. They’ve been treating you here since the shooting. Don’t you remember?”
Satin rocked on her heels for a minute then continued her pacing. “I want to go home, Sharell, I can’t stay here. Lou-Loc says I have to water the seed.”
If Sharell wasn’t convinced that Satin was insane before, she was then. Lou-Loc had been dead for months so it was impossible for him to have told her anything. “Satin, Lou-Loc is dead. There’s no way he could’ve
told you-”
“No, no, no!” Satin threw her breakfast tray against the wall, painting it with processed eggs. “He’s not dead, he’s alive, alive inside me. I gotta water the seed!” she insisted, covering her stomach with her free hand.
“Satin, what seed? What are you talking about?”
Satin’s motion was so swift that Sharell took a step back when she moved in her direction. “The seed, Sharell, our seed.” She pointed to her stomach. “Lou-Loc says I have to water the seed! I have to take care of our child.”
Child?
Sharell thought back on her dreams and the overwhelming urge that she go back and visit with Satin. Could Lou-Loc have been speaking to her from beyond the grave? For as outlandish as it might’ve seemed, Sharell knew that dreams always held a hint of the truth, be it yours or someone else’s. Back when she was a child, her dead aunt used to visit her dreams in an attempt to warn her of some danger to the family. A short time later her little brother, Malik, was murdered.
“Nurse!” Sharell called. The duty nurse came into the room, still holding the syringe and glaring at the violent young woman. “Has Ms. Angelino been given a pregnancy test?”
The nurse’s face held a look somewhere between nervousness and confusion. “Pregnancy test?” she asked as if it was something she didn’t quite understand. “No, we don’t do that here. When we check patients in they get EKGs, blood work, respiratory, all tests that fall under our standard policies, a pregnancy test not being one of them. Furthermore, she’s shown violent tendencies and will be sedated so that she doesn’t harm any more of my staff or herself.”
“No, no more drugs until she’s tested.”
“Look,” Trish said, glancing at Satin’s chart. “Apparently they didn’t feel it necessary to give her a test when she came in, and I wasn’t here for that. Any complaints you have you need to take them up with my supervisor. Now, what I plan to do is-”
“What you will do is hold off on any more medication until Satin is given a pregnancy test, unless you want to explain to my lawyer why you’ve been giving a pregnant woman medication that could be harmful to her fetus. I need her tested, immediately.”
“The lab is closed but first thing in the morning-” Trish began.
“What part of immediately don’t you understand?” Sharell snaked her neck, matching her attitude. Trish made to say something, but Sharell raised her hand for silence. “You know what, never mind.” She stormed past the nurse over to where Terrence was standing. “I hate to ask, but I need one last favor.” Sharell leaned in and whispered something in his ear.
“Oh, hell nah, Gutter’s old lady or not, you’re asking for a little much.” He shook his head.
Sharell palmed a bill into his hand and said, “I really need this done.”
Terrence looked in his palm and nodded at the hundred dollar bill. “A’ight, I’ll be right back.”
“Terrence, where are you going?” Trish called after him.
“Trish, hold it down. I’ll be right back.”
She sucked her teeth and turned her attention to Sharell. “I don’t know what y’all are up to, but I’m going to call my supervisor.” She stormed down the hall.
“Yeah, you do that,” Sharell said, going back into the room to sit with Satin. Sharell held Satin in her arms and stroked her face. Under the watchful eyes of the remaining orderlies, Sharell waited for Terrence to come back from the pharmacy, listening to Satin tell her of waterfalls and tilled earth.
TWO HOURS later Sharell found herself zipping through traffic heading back into the city. She had cried, shouted, and cursed but it didn’t change what she had discovered or do anything to resolve the situation.
As soon as the two strips appeared on the stick Sharell demanded that Satin be released to her custody so that she could receive the proper care, but the nurse wouldn’t budge. She fed Sharell a line about procedures and the girl’s release clearing the proper channels. No matter how you sliced it, Satin was still a murderer. Snake Eyes would fight the good fight in court, but there was no getting around the fact that Satin would have to stand trial and eventually go to jail.
The news of Satin’s pregnancy was both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because she was about to bring a child into the world, but a curse because of the circumstances. A million things ran through Sharell’s mind, but the most relevant thought was how to get Satin out of that hospital. Sharell was a churchgoing girl and a law-abiding citizen, but this was a situation that needed to be handled outside the law. Flipping her phone open, she called Gutter. After the third ring he picked up.
“Baby?” she said, trying to calm herself. “I need to talk to you. It’s about Satin.”
NIGHT HAD fallen over the streets, taking with it some of the humidity the day had brought on, but the cool air did nothing to ease the heat building in the pit of Gutter’s stomach. The only time he ever visited that end of Manhattan was to get new tattoos, but even those hadn’t been often since Wiz’s cousin Spider came over from out west. The boy was nasty with the ink.
The news Sharell had dropped on him hit like a ton of bricks. It was bad enough that he had to deal with his uncle’s situation on the West Coast, now he had to deal with Satin. Though he was glad to hear that she was coming back to her old self, the timing was lousy. For as much as he would’ve loved to stick around and deal with the situation personally, the attempted murder of his uncle was top priority.
Lou-Loc would’ve been happy as a sissy in Dick Town to hear that he was about to be a father. He always talked about wanting kids, but he was too deep in the game to really entertain it. The thought of the streets claiming him and leaving his child fatherless was one of the few things that terrified him, and ironically that turned out to be exactly the case. One thing was for sure, Gutter would be damned if he’d allow Lou-Loc’s child to become a ward of the state. He vowed that Lou-Loc’s child would have the same privileges in life as his own seed. The obstacle was that to get Satin out of the hospital he’d have to use unconventional means. This is what brought him dredging through Lower Manhattan in the middle of the night.
Anwar had tracked down the address for him, but even without it Gutter would’ve probably been able to find the run-down West Village bar. Though it appeared to be barely a step above being a shack, the hairs standing up along his arms told Gutter there was more to it. Gutter climbed from behind the wheel of his car and made his way across the street to the hole-in-the-wall. The entire block was empty except for two young men loitering in front of the bar. The first was tall and thin, sporting a thrift store vest over a red T-shirt, while the other was dark and dressed in baggy jeans. Gutter nodded, but they only stared as he entered the bar.
The interior was pitch-black with the exception of the glare from the jukebox and several wall-mounted televisions broadcasting rock videos. There was a light sprinkling of people along the bar or at various tables and all eyes turned to Gutter when he entered.
It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the place, especially behind the black sunglasses. A faint light emitted from an old-school jukebox that was belting out something Gutter couldn’t even identify, let alone groove to. He could see bodies moving around in different sections of the bar, but there wasn’t enough light to make out numbers, or sex. Ignoring the lingering stares he could feel on him, Gutter made his way over to the bar.
A withered old man stood behind it, wiping a glass with a dingy towel. He took his time letting his milk-colored eyes wash over Gutter. Had it not been for the intensity of his stare one might’ve mistaken him for blind. After completing his inspection, he shuffled over to where Gutter was sitting and rested his knuckles on the bar top.
“Say, man, let me get a shot of yak,” Gutter ordered.
“We don’t serve no yak here,” the old man said in a raspy voice.
“Then how about a beer?”
The old man looked past Gutter as if he could see something going on in the dark corne
r that no one else could, then turned back to Gutter. “Listen,” he said just above a whisper. “You’re either not from around here or one dumb son of a bitch. Take an old man’s advice and go get yourself a drink at that spot down the block.”
Gutter leaned in and matched the man’s tone. “I fear nothing but Allah. Now, why don’t you go get me that beer, homey, I’m waiting for somebody.”
The bartender made to say something, but the young lady who was now standing beside Gutter silenced him. She was dressed in ripped jeans and a red satin corset. Her platinum hair was slightly cropped on one side, while the top and back were long. Pale blue eyes moved seductively from Gutter to the bartender.
“Moses, it’s no wonder this bar doesn’t get much business, the customer service sucks.” Even though it was an insult, her voice seemed to ooze sex.
“Nadia, don’t you go starting nothing in my bar. You know what Kane said about not needing the heat.” Moses waggled a gnarled finger at her.
“If you don’t watch that finger you might lose it.” She clamped her pearl-white teeth together. When she was done teasing Moses, she turned back to Gutter. “So, what’s a nice young boy like you doing in a dive like this?” She tried to run her finger along the side of his face, but he grabbed her by the wrist.
“First of all”-he removed his sunglasses and looked Nadia in the eyes-“I don’t allow women to touch me uninvited. And second, I ain’t been a boy in a long time, so why don’t you keep it moving, shorty.”
“Mmm, feisty,” she purred before grabbing his crotch. The pressure was so intense that he couldn’t even cry out. “I think I’m turned on.” She leaned in to lick his earlobe, but paused as if she had just smelled something rank. Using her free hand she turned Gutter to face her and looked into his rage-filled eyes. “Somebody is keeping secrets.” She made to taunt him further, but the feeling of cold steel pressed under her chin gave her pause.
