BOOM! BOOM!
“Death, where are you?” I beg softly. “Take me out of this place.”
“Here she is,” Bishop shouts.
My eyes spring back open and I see Bishop’s scared face through the shattered glass of the front window. The second our eyes connect, I see hope ripple across his chiseled face.
“Don’t worry,Willow.We’re going to get you out of there.”
That’s what the fuck I’m afraid of.
“Hold on.” Bishop hops back onto his feet and calls out to the other members of our fam. “Y’all niggas, c’mon over here and help me get her out of here!”
“No.” Weakly, I shake my head. It’s all I can do since I lack the strength to beg him to let me die.
BOOM! BOOM!
As the storm rages on, I pick up the faint sound of wailing police sirens.
“C’mon, nigga. We need to hurry this shit up,” Bishop barks.
“Grab her feet and pull her out this way,” Novell, I think, shouts.
When he grabs the bottom of my foot, I roar, “AAAAAR-RRRRGGGH,” and nearly burst my own damn eardrums.
“NIGGA, STOP!” Bishop snatches Novell back. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“What?”
“Are you blind or some shit? Look at her fuckin’ leg. Can’t you see that we can’t pull her out that way? Look at her leg.”
BOOM! BOOM!
What the hell is wrong with my leg? I try to peek, but I can’t even swivel my head around. I need to rest. I’m tired—so fuckin’ tired. My eyes lower and though I can still hear the shit that’s going on around me, I can’t say that I give a fuck about any of it.
Sirens grow louder while the booming thunder shakes everything around me.
BOOM! BOOM!
“Kick out the front window and grab her that way,” Bishop yells. A second later, I hear their Timberlands attack the glass. Next, several hands grab my arms and drag me out of my gasoline-drenched coffin and into the freezing downpour where my tears blend in with the rain.
2
Ta′Shara
“DIE, BITCH! DIE!”
Enraged, I plunge the large knitting needles deeper into my sister LeShelle’s chest. Blood sprays everywhere. I want this bitch erased so I can piss on her fucking grave. If she thinks she’s the baddest bitch walking because she’s the leader of the Queen Gs, I got something for that ass. We have the same blood coursing through us and I can play this fucking gangsta bullshit with the best of them.
LeShelle’s bloody hand slaps against my face as she tries to push me off, but I ain’t going nowhere. I stab again and growl in her face. “I hate your fucking guts!”
Her eyes bulge.
All this shit was because LeShelle felt that I violated the law of the streets when I fell in love with Profit, a member of the Gangster Disciples’s sworn enemies: the Vice Lords. In Memphis, GDs and VLs don’t mix. I was never a part of that world and their fuckin’ rules shouldn’t have applied to me.
Until she dragged me into this shit. “DIE, BITCH! DIE!”
Snapshots of that awful prom night flash in my head. LeShelle ordering her thugs to hijack our limo and then take us to some abandoned part of town. There, she had those niggas beat and rape me. I’ll never forget how she stood there and watched as one dirty nigga after another climbed on top of me. I can still hear Profit, yelling and fighting to break free from the muthafucka that held him down and forced him to watch.They even carved the initials GD into the side of my ass like I was some fucking animal. The pain was more than anything I can describe.
When I thought that it was over and I was covered in blood, cum, and bruises, LeShelle turned toward Profit and unloaded an entire clip. Time stood still as I watched him sink to his knees and then collapse.
A waterfall of tears flows over my lashes as I snatch the needles out of LeShelle’s chest and plunge them back in. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.” I lean down and gnaw on her ear until the lower lobe falls into my mouth.
“Aaaaaargh,” LeShelle roars.
I sit up with her blood dripping from my mouth and then spit that muthafucka in her face.
“How do you like my fuckin’ balls now, big sis?”
Shock covers LeShelle’s face as the needles go back in deeper than before.
“DIE! DIE! DIE!”
LeShelle’s eyes glaze over, but it tickles the shit out of me. Big bad LeShelle is finally getting what she has coming to her. I laugh—and once I start, I can’t fuckin’ stop. I sound like a crazy person—but I don’t give a shit. I want justice. For me. For Profit.
High-pitched hysterical screams whirl around me as a herd of people rush into the room. Before I know it, several hands and arms grab and drag me off LeShelle. “Noooo! She’s not dead yet! She’s not dead!” Still wielding a weapon, I stab the closest arm in hopes to win back my freedom.
“AAAARGH,” a man howls. “Get those damn things away from her!”
The second the needles are snatched out of my hands, I fuckin’ lose it. Kicking and screaming, I claw my way through the piles of bodies that are trying to hold me down, but these muthafuckas got me pinned.
“Ta’Shara, baby. Please, stop. You’re hysterical,” Tracee, my foster mother, screams. Fat tears race down her face. There’s love there, I can see it, but that shit don’t matter right now. She can’t and will never understand the rage boiling in my veins. How could she? Tracee and her perfect husband, Reggie, with their perfect jobs and perfect suburban house, had done all they could to shield and protect me. They had planted seeds of hope and endless possibilities in my head on how I can rise above my parents’ abandonment and the horrors of the State’s foster care system and it was all bullshit.
I’m never going to get out of this fuckin’ city.
I’m never going to become a doctor.
I’m never going to escape LeShelle and her street politics. Not as long as she is still breathing.
“I want her dead! I want her dead!” I shove Tracee away and send her stumbling back over the edge of the bed. Launching forward like a locomotive, I fight to get at LeShelle’s bleeding ass again, but another team of quarterback-looking men dressed head to toe in white tackle me. “Let me go, goddamn it! Let me go!”
“I thought you guys had her pinned?” another man yells.
“We’re trying. Look what she did to my arm!”
These big niggas grab my bruised body and intensify my rage. In my mind’s eye, they are LeShelle’s goons, ready for another round at my bruised pussy. “LET GO!”
“Please, please,”Tracee wails. “Don’t hurt her.”
“LET GO!”
I jack up my knee and hit a nut sack so hard that this miscellaneous brothah can forget about having babies.
“Awwww, shit.”
At least one pair of hands fall away and I redouble my efforts to break loose, but I don’t get so much as an inch off of the floor before being tackled back down again. They’re going to rape me! God, no. Please not again. Terror seizes me.
I can’t let LeShelle win. I can’t!
“Ta’Shara, sweetheart. They are just trying to help you,” Tracee yells above the scuffling. “Please don’t fight them.”
“No! No!” I don’t believe her. She’s a liar.They are all liars.
There’s a painful prick on my right arm. I wrench my head around to see a nurse inject me with something. “What are you doin’? What is that?”
“Don’t worry.This is going to calm you down,” the woman says, smiling.
I open my mouth to tell her that I don’t want to calm down, but the words get lost in the journey from my brain to my mouth. A second after that, my tongue swells to the point that it feels like it’s too big for my mouth. My vision is the next thing to go as the bitch in front of me blurs. I blink several times, but then my eyes grow heavy. Before long, I can barely keep them open.
What the fuck?
“Get the jacket,” someone shouts.
Jack
et? What jacket?
“Be careful. Don’t hurt her,”Tracee sobs.
“Sorry, ma’am, but we’re more worried about her hurting someone else,” an attendant tells her.
“Ta’Shara, baby. Everything is going to be all right,”Tracee wails as I’m being strapped into something. There is no need for it now since the horse tranquilizer shit they gave me has kicked in.
“How’s the other one?” a woman asks.
Even though I’m sinking into a black hole, I wait with bated breath for the answer.
“We have a pulse!”
LeShelle is still alive.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! My scream ricochets inside of my head as I tumble into darkness in despair.
3
Qiana
“WHAAAAAH! WHAAAAH!”
Out here in the middle of nowhere on a hidden rocky gravel road, I lift a baby out of its dead momma’s belly as bile rushes up and burns my throat. I choke that shit down. I ain’t no punk-bitch. When I set out to do a job, my ass follows through. I’m taking one hell of a risk doing this job for Queen G LeShelle. After all, Queen Gs and Flowers don’t mix—ever.
But I’m the one who brokered this deal. I wanted that pip-squeak Essence to stop sniffing around Profit. After all, he is Vice Lord royalty. That’s something that even he forgot when he dipped his dick in that GD trash, Ta’Shara. I’m playing a dangerous game aligning with LeShelle on this hit. After all, word on the street is she’s the deadly bitch that put both her sister and Profit in separate hospitals, but sometimes the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I dropped dime that Essence was two-timing the sets—which was true.The lil blood clot had struck some kind of deal with our main gangsta bitch, Lucifer, and in turn, the VL fam was ordered not to touch her. However, I learned a long time ago that there is a way around everything—but there’s also a cost.
LeShelle didn’t waste a second blazing that snitch, Essence, but in return, she wanted me to get rid of one of her man’s jump-offs, Yolanda. Problem was: LeShelle failed to mention that the bitch was pregnant—and not just kinda pregnant. This yellow heifer was due to shit this baby out any day.
That’s when it hits me that my ass needs some insurance. I trust that LeShelle about as far as I can throw her ass. Any bitch that will order her own sister’s rape is a bad bitch and one you’ll have to constantly look over your shoulder for.
“WHAAAAH! WHAAAH!”
My God, this damn thing has the strongest set of lungs I’ve ever heard. “Somebody get me something to wipe this shit off.”
My Flowers, Lil Bit, Tyneshia, and Adaryl, who’d been standing back while I carve this bastard out of this dead bitch, slink farther away. I glance over my shoulder and stare their asses down. “Are you bitches hard of hearing or something?”
At seeing the grayish black umbilical cord stretching between momma and baby, Adaryl slaps a hand over her mouth, turns, and then spills her guts all over the dusty, gravel road.
Fuckin’ pussy. I roll my eyes. Sometimes I wonder why the hell I even bother with these tricks. “Just look in the backseat. I got some clothes back there.”
“WHAAAAH. WHAAAAAH.”
“Damn, muthafucka. Shut up.” I slice through the spongy cord and more shit splatters everywhere.
Lil Bit is the first to toss up her hands. “Yo, Qiana. This shit is foul.You didn’t say shit about this bitch being pregnant and you certainly didn’t say nothin’ about cuttin’ no baby out.”
“WHAAAAAH! WHAAAH!”
“Whatever. The shit is done now. Put on your big girl panties and move your ass.”
Their shifty eyes look everywhere but at me. I jump up and step away from the dead bitch on the ground as thunder booms overhead and lightning lights up the night sky.
“Awww shit. This is a bad muthafuckin’ sign,” Tyneshia says, backing away. “This is some demonic cursed shit. Our asses is gonna go to hell for this.You can miss my ass with all this shit.”
“I don’t fucking believe you scared-ass pussies. You call yourselves Flowers—the baddest bitches locking down the VL family?” I stare each one of them down, including Adaryl’s puking ass, to let them know how disgusted I am. “All y’all ever talk about is how y’all want to be big bitches that did big thangs. Now here’s the chance of a lifetime and this is how you act—pissing in your panties and emptying your guts?”
“Nuh, uh. Don’t pull that reverse physiological shit on us,” Lil Bit protests.
This dumb bitch here. “The word is psychological.”
“Bitch, you know what the fuck I meant. This ain’t no sanctioned hit. This is you doin’ a favor for that Queen G LeShelle and that shit alone is enough to get all our asses canceled and you fuckin’ know it. We’re here because we’re your girls and as your girl I’m telling you: This. Shit. Is. Fucked. Up.”
“WHAAAH. WHAAAAH.”
“No. I’m paying back a debt. LeShelle murked her own for me and in return I dusted off this bitch. But if the crooked ho even thinks about doing me dirty, this lil muthafucka is insurance. No doubt Python will cancel that bitch in order to get his flesh and blood back. Fuck. I might have his ass do the shit regardless. There needs to be payback for the trick shooting my boo full of holes.”
“Your boo?” Adaryl swipes a hand over mouth. “Did my ass miss some shit?”
I shoot my gaze back over to her ass.
Adaryl tosses up her hands. “Cool. Whatever, bitch.”
Lil Bit shakes her head as the sky opens up and pelts us with rain.
“WHAAAAH! WHAAAAH!”
“Shit.” Now I have to worry about the baby freezing to death. “I’ll finish this shit myself.” I shove past them and march to my old black Ford Exploder. In the back, I find my duffle bag and dig through it until I find a pair of old sweat clothes and gym towel. The shit is going to have to do in a pinch. I deposit my knife and gloves in the bag and clean off the baby.
“WHAAAAH! WHAAAAH!”
“Hold on, lil man.” I double-check to make sure that was a small dick I saw and not some gigantic clit dangling in between its legs. “Damn. You already rocking more pipe than some of the niggas I done fucked with.” I smile, but the baby sucks in another deep breath and really lets me have it.
“WHAAAAAAAH! WHAAAAAAH! WHAAAAAH!”
“Okay. I have a stupid question,” Tyneshia says, stepping up behind me. “Who’s gonna take care of that muthafucka? You don’t know shit about takin’ care of no fuckin’ baby.”
“How fuckin’ hard can it be?Your ass has one.” I wrap the baby up and attempt to bounce him, but that shit irritates him even more. “Here.You hold him. We got to hurry and get out of here.”
Tyneshia jumps back. “Me? Why the fuck do I have to hold him?”
“Because I said so.” I attempt to shove the baby into her arms, but the bitch jumps back.
“Nah. Nah. I ain’t in this mess with you. No way.”
“Are you kiddin’ me? You’re up to your eyeballs in this shit.” I shoot my gaze from her to Lil Bit and Adaryl. “All of you. You feel me? I go down. We all go down. So remember that shit before any of y’all start thinking about droppin’ dime on this hit.”
The three of them blink back at me while the driving rain drenches our asses. I’m sure that they get where I’m coming from, but Tyneshia looks unmoved. “Fine.You want out?”
Feeling herself,Tyneshia thrusts up her chin. “Damn right.”
“Then you’re out.” I whip out my Glock from the back of my jeans and blow her ass away. When she hits the rocky gravel, a thin wisp of smoke curls out of the center of her forehead.
“Holy shit!” Lil Bit screams. “Are you crazy?”
“What the fuck did you do that shit for?” Adaryl roars.
“Does anybody else want out?”
The girls stare wide-eyed at me.
“I didn’t hear y’all. Do either one of you bitches got something else to say about this hit?”
Lil Bit and Adaryl share one last look be
fore shaking their heads.
“Good. Now move your asses and let’s get the fuck out of here.”
4
Alice
Rain shatters like white diamonds across the van’s windshield as my new nigga pulls our black van off the main road. My heart pounds like a fuckin’ racehorse, anticipating seeing my Nana Maybelle’s old house. It’s been so long and there’s so many memories—good and bad.
“Are you sure that you can see where you’re going?”
He cocks a lopsided grin. “Don’t worry, baby. I got this.”
I hate to tell him that I don’t trust any nigga. After we travel a half a mile down a gravelly road, the house finally comes into view. Gone is its former regal beauty.The place has seen better days, but that’s a’ight, it will suit my purposes.To be honest, I feared that this day would never come. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve dreamed of this moment for years, but it was too much to believe that I could ever pull it off.
Now I have.
Look. I’ve done a lot of fucked-up shit in my life. I know that—but a lot of times, the shit wasn’t my fault. The cards have always been stacked against me. From my being born to a momma who pumped out babies until her insides fell out to my being shipped out of the cotton fields of Mississippi to my Nana Maybelle in Memphis. At first, I remember being excited. Back in the day, Memphis was the shit. The music scene was jumpin’ and niggas was making big money hustlin’ everything from numbers to smack. No one hustled harder than Nana Maybelle.
When I arrived, I thought Nana was rich. None of our asses went without a muthafuckin’ thing. We wore the best clothes and lived in a big-ass house. People respected Nana’s gangsta like she had balls saggin’ between her legs. One thing she made sure of was no one fucked with her people or her paper—and not in that order.
But nobody stayed under her roof for free either. If we expected to keep that roof over our heads then we were expected to pull our weight. So I was taught how to run numbers, do drops, and collect taxes within days of my ass moving in. As far as protection, my sister, Maybelline, taught me how to wield a blade. I got real good at the shit, too. We lived like fuckin’ kings and queens and there was no bigger queen gangster than Maybelline. She had a line of niggas callin’ her Peaches and ready to lick the crack of her ass despite her having a big monkey on her back. Everyone pretended like they didn’t see it.
Gangsta Divas Page 2
