His bossiness sparks my anger. “You’re my brother not my father. I’ll get there when I get there.”
“COME HOME!”
Instead of answering, I disconnect the call.
“Problem?”
“I gotta go.” I check out his sexy poise lying in that bed and I poke out my bottom lip. I don’t want to go home.
Wiz Khalifa starts up again.
Without looking at the caller ID, I yell into the phone: “Dammit, Charlie. I’ll be there when I get there. Get off my ass!”
“Gurl, it’s me, Lil Bit. Where the fuck are you? Your brother has been blowing up my shit up all day.”
Thrown, I exhale and calm down. “I’m still hanging out with a friend.”
Lil Bit gasps. “Don’t tell me that you’re still out with that fine muthafucka you were hugged up on last night.”
“Fine. I won’t tell you. What happened last night? Charlie just told me that Bishop is dead.”
“Yeah. Everybody’s tryna find out who was poppin’ off at Da Club. Some people are saying it was GD, some say it was the Crips or rather those pussy-puck Crippettes that’s been hitting our trap houses and shit. But there’s a couple of crazy fucks spitting that Lucifer set the shit up.”
“That’s crazy!”
“Is it? Everybody knows that power struggle was going to get bloody one way or another.”
“But to erase her own blood? Nah. That’s not Lucifer’s style.”
“Cain killed Abel. I remember that shit from Bible school.”
“Bitch, your ass ain’t never been up in nobody’s church. You done forgot who you’re talking to.”
“Whatever, ho.”
“Well, I don’t believe that Lucifer shit. The bitch is cold, but—”
“Yeah.Yeah. I don’t believe it, either. But that ain’t all. That nigga Python was still alive, girl.”
“What?” Shit, the whole damn world has flipped upside down while I’m out here screwing this nigga’s brains out. “But I thought—how?”
“Muthafucka must’ve made like a fish and swam his ass out of the Mississippi. Doesn’t matter because Lucifer and Profit found his ass and guess what.”
“I’m almost too afraid to ask.”
“The nigga was getting married at some old-ass church out in West Memphis.”
“Get the fuck out of here. Who was he marrying? Ain’t his girl still laid up in the hospital?”
“She was. Cousin Skeet going crazy all over the news because she busted out that muthafucka.”
“What?”
Lil Bit clicks her tongue. “Yeah, girl, but they’re dead though now. Lucifer and Profit handled they asses when they came out of the church.”
“Y’all sure? Sounds like death don’t want to have shit to do with their asses.”
I glance up at Diesel, who’s watching me like a hawk.
“Well, you better get your ass back over here. Enemies are all around—and you need to get rid of this baby.”
33
Ta′Shara
LeShelle is awake.
The very idea fills me with terror and anger. What’s worse is that it’s been more than twelve hours since Profit flew out my window with murder in his eyes. I begged to go with him. I wanted to be the one to actually put a bullet in LeShelle’s skull, but he insisted that this was something that he had to do. Profit didn’t stick around to argue. He was gone in a blink of an eye.
Sleep eludes me as I lay watching the clock next to my nightstand. I keep telling myself that Profit will return any moment with the news of LeShelle’s death. Any guilt about that also eludes me. The love I had for my sister died on that awful prom night. Now all I can do is wait.
Tracee takes one look at me and then shifts into panic mode. She doesn’t like my color, my temperature, or the large bags under my eyes. Reggie is dragged in to take a look at me and he’s concerned as well.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” I keep telling them, but even to my own ears it sounds like a lie.
Doctors are called, prescriptions are phoned to our local pharmacy and, before I know it, sleep claims me, whether I like it or not.
I don’t.
Only nightmares wait for me on the other side. From the second I close my eyes, a kaleidoscope of laughing faces and grunting niggas assault me—and the pain. I will never forget the pain of battering fists against my rib cage or the dull switchblade that carved GD on the side of my ass.
My screams ring inside my head, but those damn pills won’t let me wake up. I can’t wake up. Please, God. Let me wake up.
“TA’SHARA! TA’SHARA, HONEY. WAKE UP! WAKE UP!”
At last, I’m snatched out of the nightmare. I emerge from my tangled sheets like a drowning woman, breaking through the ocean’s surface.
“It’s okay. It’s okay.”Tracee throws her arms around me and squeezes out what little breath I have left. “I’m here now. Everything is going to be all right.”
She means well, but I’m suffocating. I push her away and tumble back off the bed to scramble for the bathroom.
“Ta’Shara, honey. Are you all right?” Tracee rushes after me, committed to her new role as my shadow.
In the bathroom, I barely get the lid up on the toilet seat before I throw up everything but my lungs into the porcelain bowl.
“I’m so sorry, honey. I’m so sorry.”Tracee grabs a face cloth and runs it beneath the cold water in the sink. “They told me that those pills wouldn’t be that strong,” she rambles, wringing out the towel and rushing over to slap it across my forehead.
I don’t have the strength to shove off her smothering again. I can barely handle the dry heaves that are wracking my body and twisting my belly into a huge knot. I admit the cold compress feels good against my face, but my screams and LeShelle’s gunshots are still ringing in my ears.
Is she dead yet? She can’t be—or my nightmare would end—wouldn’t it? Yes. I’m sure of it. But as long as the bitch is alive . . .
I force my thoughts away from LeShelle and wedge myself between the toilet and the bathtub. I don’t know how long I remain curled there before Tracee calls on Reggie to help get me back to my bedroom.
Reggie is a lot stronger than he looks.The studious professor is able to lift and carry me as if I weigh nothing. But when he plants me back into my bed, I beg him, “Don’t let me go back to sleep.”
They glance at each other with worried lines tunneling across their foreheads.
“I’ll fix you something to eat,” Tracee volunteers. “Some soup. That should help settle your stomach.” She races out the room before I tell her that food is the last thing on my mind.
Once she’s gone, Reggie and I stare at each other like survivors on top of a roof after a bad hurricane.What do we say? What do we do?
Reggie is the first to try and communicate. He clears his throat and rasps, “She means well.”
“I know.” I sit back up in bed and hug my knees to my chest. “You mean well, too.”
His brown eyes wet up. “None of this would have happened if I—”
“Don’t do this again. I told you that Profit tried to save me that night. It wasn’t his fault.”
Reggie shakes his head. He doesn’t want to accept anything other than his version of events. “You’re trying to protect him.”
“Yes,” I admit. “Just like he tried to protect me.”
Again with the head shaking. “You’re not to see him again. Ever.”
“I’m sorry. But I can . . . and I will. I love him.” I thrust up my chin in defiance.
Reggie’s head jerks back as if I’d spat in his face. Then he looks at me with such compassion and heartbreak. “It always happens. No matter how good the parents or how much promise and potential you girls have—the moment some nappy-head thug flashes a smile—you young girls throw everything away to go chasing after some ghetto fantasy.”
“It—it’s not like that.You don’t know Profit.”
“Yes. It is—and yes, I
do.” Reggie’s chin rises as well. “I’ve seen this too many times to count. Little girls like you drift in and out of my classrooms every year. Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and despite all the good-looking, intelligent brothers sitting right next to you in class, deep down you all want a thug: some nigga that can’t keep their pants pulled up, body’s tatted and brags about the fat knot of cash in his pants.Those guys think that the money in their pockets make them men and the guns they have tucked at their backs make them even bigger men.
“Big men like your boyfriend, Profit, are always being zipped up in a body bag on the nightly news. If a few bullets don’t get him, then he’s thrown in the back of one of the taxpayers’ fine patrol cars where he’ll spend his youth behind bars. Of course, he’ll ask you to wait for him on the outside—you and God knows how many babies he’ll put on you and his other women. And you’ll try—but it gets hard being a single mother without a high school diploma or a college degree. You won’t be able to find anyone who’ll pay you more than minimum wage. So you turn to the game, too—get your own knot of cash and a gun and then suddenly you’re a gangsta diva until a bullet or jail claims you, too.”
A long silence hangs in the air before I realize that I’m supposed to say something. “It’s . . . not . . . like . . . that.That’s not us. That will never be us,” I tell him even though doubt creeps around the back of my mind.
“No. Of course not.Your love is going to turn your gangster into Prince Charming and you’ll ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after. Ain’t that the fairy-tale bullshit that you keep telling yourself?”
During the next silence, I can’t think of anything else to say.
“I should have never let you go to that prom with him. I knew better.” With a final shake of his head, he turns and walks out of my room.
I sit, hugging my knees and shaking my head. “It’s . . . not . . . like . . . that. It’s not.”
But it is.
34
Shariffa
It’s a fuckin’ miracle that me and my girls got our ass out of Da Club alive. None of us are a stranger to war, but that shit last night cut way too fuckin’ close. Looking back on it with 20/20 vision, I’m thinking that hit bordered on stupid more than brass balls.
My nigga, Lynch, ain’t stopped bitching since we rolled our asses back home. Instead of a good dicking down for a job well done, I’m sitting on the edge of our bed wired and sleepy as hell from his bitching all night. In the light of day, I think he, like the rest of the niggas on our block, is jealous and mad that they weren’t the one that rocked the VLs’ second-in-command to a permanent sleep. Those bullets are gonna put me and my girls in the streets for years to come. All I can say is that muthafucka got caught slipping. Grape Street Crips are true players in this game for real.
Lynch stops pacing and mushes me in the head. “Are you even listening to me?”
I can’t even take his mean-muggin’ seriously no more and start rolling my eyes.
“No. The. Fuck.You. Didn’t.” His fists ball at his sides like he wants to get something jumping.
My twin babies start whining from the back room. I stand up only for Lynch to shove me back down at the foot of our bed. “Lynch, I’m tired of this shit. I know you hear them boys.” Knowing my boo, my twin boys are probably still sitting in the same diapers I put on them before I left out of the house yesterday.
“Let Momma take care of them. I ain’t through hollering at you.We still have a few muthafuckin’ things to get settled.”
“Like what?” I yell. “What’s done is done. Me and my girls got paid, we squashed another roach and everything is everything. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that you’re busting way too many moves without my sanctioning the shit. Niggas are talking.You need to know your place. I’m the muthafucka swinging the big dick up in here. I ain’t down for feasting off a bitch who thinks she has bigger balls than me.”
Outside our door, I spot Lynch’s cranky-ass mother shuffling extra slow tryna ear-hustle on our conversation.
Lynch follows my gaze and spins around. Seeing his nosy-ass momma, he strolls to the door and slams the shit in her face.
I smile because I know that shit pisses her off.
My nigga sees me grinning and gets more irritated. “See. Your ass is worried about the wrong damn thing.”
“I hear you talkin’,” I tell him. You just ain’t saying shit.
“Dammit, Shariffa. What the fuck are you and your five-dollar crew tryna prove? Hitting a Vice Lord club for that bullshit take?”
“Ha!” I bounce up from the bed and dodge his ass in case he’s thinking about pushing my ass back down. “My five-dollar crew, as you put it, is putting in work. Mad work—and we getting shit done. I fail to see what the muthafuckin’ problem is. Did you declare war on these muthafuckin’ slobs or not?”
“Yeah. I declared war. This shit is for real soldiers. Grape Street ain’t blasting behind no iron skirt like those black-and-gold, faggoty flag heads. You wanna hit some trap houses for some pocket change? Fine. Do you. But a real battlefield? What the fuck was you thinking?”
“You know what? We better squash this because I can’t believe half the shit that’s coming out of your mouth right now.” I turn toward the door, but Lynch grabs my wrist and jerks me back.
“The shit is squashed when I say shit is squashed, dammit.”
This nigga’s face is so fuckin’ close, his nose is bumping mine and I swear to God that I see steam rolling out of his ears. But I can take a beating and keep on ticking, if it comes down to that. In the meantime, I’m not gonna let anybody punk me, not even my man. I rock my neck and rake my gaze up and down his shit before snatching my arm back. “Let’s get some shit clear,” I tell him. “I love you, but you don’t own me. Gone are the days when I let a muthafucka put hands on me. You do that shit one more time and you’re gonna be pulling back a nub. Try me if you want to. I didn’t do none of that shit last night to stomp on egos—so if any of your soldiers got their balls twisted in they panties over that shit, they ain’t no real soldiers anyway. All that matters is that Grape Street Crips come out on top. The fact that we even pulled that shit off last night goes to show just how weak those slobs are now that Fat Ace is out the picture. The time to crush those muthafuckas is now.”
The muscles in Lynch’s jaw twitch like they’re plugged into an electrical outlet. But after a long, hard minute, he backs up a step, even though his voice remains deadly. “They were weak as long as their loyalty was split three ways,” Lynch says. “With Bishop out the picture, those niggas are just going to fall in line behind that he-bitch, Lucifer. If you really wanted to impress my ass, that’s the roach you should’ve handled last night. She’s more of a threat than her brother ever dreamed of being. Now you done gone and pissed her off.”
“What about Profit?”
“Fuck.You got more work put in than that young gun. Lucifer is the bitch we got to watch out for. L-U-C-I-F-E-R,” he emphasizes like my ass is stuck on stupid. After another minute of reflecting on it, I see his point, but I can’t swallow my pride and admit that he’s right. “If that’s the case then we’ll handle that shit when the time comes. I ain’t scared of no muthafucka that pisses sitting down.”
“I ain’t too sure that she does,” Lynch grunts. “The plan works as long as we divide and conquer. We don’t have the Vice Lords’ numbers. You knock one of them down and ten more are standing there to take his place before you go home and rest your head.”
I wave that shit off. “As long as they’re selling bullets, we can blast all day every day. And as far as those Gangster Disciples, they asses are on life support. Our territory is only gonna grow and so will our number of soldiers. Win-win, baby. I’m telling you. It’s a new era. We got this shit.”
“I’ll believe that when someone brings me that ugly snake head on a silver platter. Him and his crazy bitch LeShelle.”
“So you think he’s still ali
ve?”
“Fuck yeah. That nigga don’t die—only multiply.”
The idea of Python’s severed head gets my tits tingling. How I would love to squat over that muthafucka and take a good, long piss. However, seeing the worry lines knit across Lynch’s brow, I ease off of him.
“LeShelle’s ass is out of the picture. The bitch’s sister took care of that shit.”
“I thought so, too, but word on the news last night was that the bitch woke up and broke out the hospital, dropping more bodies.”
Fuck. These roaches don’t die. My mind zooms back to that convo I overheard at the club—something about LeShelle and some baby being cut out of some chick. I shake it off and focus on the problems at hand. “Baby, you worry too much.” I slide my hands up around his neck and pull his head down for a reassuring kiss. I take my time, sucking on his tongue and rubbing my horny ass against his muscular frame. “One day, we’re gonna rule it all. I’m going to make damn sure of it.” Feeling like some of the heat has cooled between us, I slide my arms around Lynch’s neck and give him my best puppy-dog look. “I’m sorry if I stepped a toe over the line, baby. It’s just that I want what’s best for you. I see you locking Memphis down under one throne—but I can’t want this shit more than you. We gotta be partners in this shit.” For an extra ten points, I rub up on him.
“One throne.” He shakes his head. “You dream big, baby.”
“But I thought that was what you loved about me?”
Lynch’s hands slide down my backside to squeeze my ass. “There’s a whole lot of shit that I love about you, baby. But we got to play this shit right. No more flying off half-cocked and off script.You run everything by me. And I mean, everything.”
“Yes, daddy.”That shit gets me a firm smack on the ass.
Smack.
“I really should throw your ass across my knee for that stunt,” he threatens.
Smack.
“Even if I promise not to do it no more?” I bite my lower lip to tease him some more. Clearly the storm has passed and it’s time for us to play.
“It’s the only way that your ass is going to learn.”
Gangsta Divas Page 19
