“Yeah. Well, whatever you do, don’t go crawling back to Skeet’s crazy self. He don’t do nothing but beat your ass anyway.”
“He ain’t beating nobody’s ass. I don’t know where you get that shit from.”
“From Smokestack. Plus, I got two eyes. He beats on all us street bitches but then puts his wife on a fuckin’ pedestal.”
“Smokestack needs to get out of my business. He’s always talking that black militant shit while tryna crawl up your ass. No offense.”
“None taken. But just because I’m white doesn’t mean that I can’t be down for the black cause.”
I laughed. “That’s exactly what it means.”
“Whatever, girl. What about Terrell? When are you going to try and see him again?”
The question dropped a mountain of guilt on my shoulder. “I’ma see him.” One day.
Dribbles shook her head. “Whatever, girl. I gotta piss.” She stood up and went into the bathroom. By the time she returned, I’d already thrown a couple of rocks into the pipe and was coasting through the clouds.
“Alice, what the hell is this?”
I heard her, but I couldn’t open my eyes.
“Alice!”
“Whaaaat?”
“Whose pregnancy test is this?” she demanded.
“Fuck. Who do you think? It’s my room.”
“You’re pregnant?”
“Shit, naw. That muthafucka gotta be wrong. I’ll pick up another one tomorrow.”
“Girl, these things are pretty accurate. Why the fuck are you smoking if you’re pregnant?”
“Ah, shit. Don’t you start in on me.” I blindly reached over and snatched the test out of her hands. “If I wanted a sermon I’d take my ass to church.”
“Well, whose it? Isaac’s or Skeet’s?”
“Why? What difference does it make? We already know that Melvin ain’t gonna lay claim to nothing that doesn’t come out of his bougie wife’s pussy. Besides, I ain’t messed with him in a minute.”
“So it’s Isaac’s?”
“Fuck him,” I blurted out again. “Maybelline deserves his cheating ass,” I said, pretending that I was more mad than hurt.
Dribbles plopped down next to me and grabbed the pipe. While I drifted among the clouds, Isaac’s fine ass kept interrupting my thoughts. I knew that he wasn’t mine, but I couldn’t stand the thought of Maybelline having him. I snuck over to Maybelline’s a few times and even watched Terrell play with the neighborhood kids, but I was more interested in Isaac as he worked the shop, hustled his corners, and inducted brothas into the Folks Nation. I never once drew up enough courage to ring Maybelline’s doorbell again.
What did it say about me that I wanted my sister’s man more than I wanted Terrell back?
I thought about going to the clinic and getting rid of his baby. I feared Isaac’s response would be like Melvin’s when I told him about the pregnancy. Eventually, I caved and went to see him at Goodson’s Auto Shop soon after entering my second trimester and handed him the four-month-old pregnancy test.
“What the fuck are you giving me this shit for?” he asked, waving the stick around.
“Why do you think?”
Isaac’s expression remained stony as he closed his office door and walked around me to take a seat behind the desk. “You need some money and a ride to the clinic?”
I flinched. He didn’t even blink on that shit. “I’m keeping it.”
His head rocked back with his burst of laughter. “And then do what? Drop it off at my crib for me and Maybelline to raise like your other boy?”
“No. I can raise this baby. We can raise the baby.”
“We?” He laughs. “That ain’t my baby.”
“Muthafucka, you know how babies are made. I ain’t been messing with nobody but you since we first hooked up.”
“Sheeeiiit. You need to get the hell on with that. That can be anybody’s baby. I’ve heard all about how you hustle for them rocks—and we ain’t fucked in months.”
“I know. I’m four months pregnant,” I barked.
“So? You’re a ho and you were a ho four months ago. That doesn’t make that seed mine.”
“Fuck you! I know that this is your baby and I’m keeping it!” Silly me, I held a small nugget of hope that he’d want this child. After all, he had no problem raising Terrell as his own. Shit. I could take Terrell back and we could raise both kids together. I was probably a better mother than Maybelline.
Isaac sucked in a deep breath and took a moment to calm down. “Okay. Let’s slow this down. I can’t do this with you. You gonna have to handle that.”
“Why not?”
“I’m married—to your sister.”
“Did you forget that while you were fucking me in her bed?” I snapped. “Maybe I should go over there and have a little talk with Sister Dearest and let her know that she has been sleeping in my wet spot.”
Isaac bolted out of the chair. I went for the door, but before I knew it I was jacked up against the wall with his hands wrapped around my throat.
Scared shitless, I clawed at his hand, trying to get air.
“You’re not going to tell Peaches a damn thing. You hear me? I’m not about to let you fuck that shit up. Hear me?”
He rammed my head back against the wall. Stars exploded behind my eyes while I fought for oxygen.
“If you ever even fix your mouth to tell Peaches anything about this right here, I’ll personally give you a muthafuckin’ abortion. You feel me?”
I tried to answer but I couldn’t get anything out. Isaac slammed my head one last time and then released me. I collapsed to the floor, gasping. Once I dragged in enough air, I grabbed his leg. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I just wanted us to be together.” I clawed my way up and tried to unzip his pants. “Here, baby. Let me make you feel good. You know I can make you feel good again.” I unzipped him and tried to whip out his dick.
“Stop it. Stop.” He wrestled with my hands, but I was determined to prove to him that I could fuck him the way he liked.
“Please! Let me show you,” I begged and then eventually won the war. We fucked on the floor, on the desk, and even up against the wall. I was sure that I was back in good with him. But the next day he was back to acting like he didn’t know me. Any time I tried to get at him at the shop, he had corner boys on the lookout to make sure I stayed away. Once or twice, I thought about following through on my threat and drop dime to Maybelline, but each time, I remembered Isaac’s threat and believed that he was a man of his word so I stayed away.
That October, Mason Carver came into the world, kicking and screaming.
Isaac never even came to the hospital to see him.
39
Trigger
“We fucked up,” I tell the girls during our private party at my crib. “We should have never made that hit at Da Club. I liked Bishop. That short time we were together was fun.Why couldn’t he just sit still and let us take the money? Now we got to worry about the wrath of his sister. I won’t be surprised if she pulls a one-eighty and focuses her army on us. We were good as long as GD were getting the brunt of their attacks—but killing the bitch’s brother?” I shake my head and lean over the glass table to inhale a line of coke.The shit hits my brain like a locomotive and leaves my mind blown.
Behind me, Jaqorya and Sharcardi are already passed out.
“Goddamn, Trigger,” Shariffa complains. “Don’t you start on me with that shit, too. Lynch is already riding my last nerve. We did what we had to do. Ain’t nobody’s fault that nigga Bishop got all swoll over a couple of Benjamins.That shit is on him. If he had checked his fuckin’ ego, and not try to test bitches, his ass would still be sucking air right now.”
“Damn straight,” Brika cosigns before pushing me aside so that she can snort a line.
I hear what they’re saying, but I can’t help but feel that this is no ordinary fuckup. Not when it comes to dealing with Lucifer. Muthafuckas say that you w
ill never see her ass coming.
Brika pulls her head up and wipes her nose. “If you ask me, if anybody fucked up, it was your ass,Trig.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. You didn’t have to break that slob off no pussy. That was why he was so hot. He didn’t give a fuck about that chump change on the table. That nigga was wide open because he got played in front of his boys. Niggas don’t like it when bitches pimp their asses. All you had to do was just tease his ass like we said. He would’ve been pissed but he would’ve kept the right side of his head.”
True. “Whatever.”
Brika cocks her head. “You’re just mad because your ass got sprung on that nigga.”
“And you’re mad because I got your ass sprung.” I flash her my titties.
“Don’t start nothing your ass can’t finish,” Brika warns.
Shariffa reaches over and splashes Patrón into her glass and then downs the shit as if it was water.
“Bottom line: we’ve been poking a stick in the Vice Lords’ eyes for a while now. If they come with it, then we’ll come harder. Like I told Lynch, we can’t win the war for the streets without fighting a battle. Think about how easy that shit was the other night. I’m telling you, without Fat Ace holding them niggas down, the sky is the muthafuckin’ limit. The same goes for the Gangster Disciples. Python got everybody from the FBI to Homeland Security checking for his ass, so it don’t matter whether he’s dead or not, he can’t run shit, his niggas McGriff and KyJuan are both six feet under and sucking on the devil’s dick. Their whole shit is on life support. Now it’s our time to be on.”
“I bet you’re liking that shit.”
“Damn straight. Karma is a bitch. The Gangster Disciples can sit back and watch me ascend the throne with the Grape Street Crips.”
Brika laughs. “Girl, you’re ambitious as hell.”
“But you’re ridin’ with me though, right?”
“All day, every day—but I don’t think this shit is gonna stay easy.”
“Why you say?”
Brika hesitates.
Shariffa jumps on her. “Look, bitch. I’m too fuckin’ drunk right now to try to read your mind.”
“All right. I didn’t want to say nothing, but I thought I saw someone in Da Club the other night.”
“Who?”
“It was this raw dawg I met in Atlanta a ways back. A green-eyed gangsta that goes by the name of Diesel.”
The color drains from Shariffa’s face. “Diesel?”
“What? Do you know him?” I ask.
“I don’t know if we’re talking about the same person, but Python has a cousin named Diesel in Atlanta.”
“Well, the nigga I’m talking about has the ATL on lock. No weight moves and no fuckin’ bodies drop without his say-so.”
“Shit.” Shariffa looks sick.
“I take it we’re talking about the same nigga then?”
Shariffa nods. “But what the fuck is he doing here?”
“Reinforcement,” I chime in. “Your ex ain’t going down without a fight. If he got mean connects like this Diesel muthafucka, then you’re gonna have to put your plans of a city takeover on pause.”
Our private party now feels like a wake. The idea that we have to deal with Lucifer and Diesel, I keep coming to the same conclusion. “We fucked up.”
This time, Shariffa and Brika nod in agreement.
40
LeShelle
The honeymoon is over. Two days of being walled up in this tiny-ass house in Covington. We can’t go anywhere. We can’t do anything and I’m about to go out of my mind. Python spends most of his time either on the phone or having small meetings with newly promoted soldiers within the set. New connects, new gunrunners, and new money men drift in and out the house while I twiddle my damn thumbs. This is what it must’ve truly been like for Bonnie and Clyde on the run.
I miss Shotgun Row. I miss Momma Peaches and I even miss those damn snakes that slithered around the house. How much longer am I going to have to put up with this shit? I keep hitting Kookie on her cell, but she never picks up. I wonder if they’re arranging Pit Bull’s funeral.
After hours of watching morning talk shows and bad soap operas, I decide to take a long bubble bath. I go to the bag where Python had my things packed and start pulling out toiletries. But then I find a worn men’s wallet. Curious, I flip it open and am startled to see a photo of Fat Ace.
What the hell? Turning, I head to the living room where Python is still on the phone with God knows who. I clear my throat. When he looks up, I wave the wallet at him. “What’s this?”
To my surprise, the color drains from his face.
“Yo, man. Let me call you back.” He disconnects the phone, climbs to his feet, and comes and takes the wallet from my hand.
I stand there and wait for an explanation. After a few seconds, I prompt him. “Well?”
Python sucks in a deep breath. “There’s, uh, something I haven’t told you about the night of my accidents.”
The fact that he can’t even look at me lets me know that I’m not going to like what he’s about to say.
“Okaaaay.” I roll my hands along for him to speed up and spit it out.
“I know it’s crazy, but . . . I believe that I may have found my long-lost brother.”
I flinch. That was not what I was expecting him to say. “Mason?”
Python nods.
“Where?”
He holds up the wallet. “Fat Ace.”
My ears can’t be working. “What in the hell are you talking about?” I back away from Python and look at him like he sprouted a second head. “You’re fucking serious.”
“Afraid so.”
I blink, waiting for him to say more, but he’s looking at me about as hard as I’m looking at him. After a while, I figure it’s best that I pick my mouth off the floor. “Okay. Let’s slow this train down and you tell me where in the hell you got this crazy idea in your head.”
“All right. But maybe you should sit down.”
Irritated, I open my mouth to argue, but then think better of it. I’m not sure whether I can handle another bombshell. I plant my butt down in a nearby chair and this time listen to an unedited version of what happened the night the Vice Lords tried to run a murder train to Shotgun Row. As I listen I find myself wishing I’d been there in the heat of the battle.
My heart skips a few beats during the parts where the chase between him and Fat Ace extends down the wrong way on I-240, when he clipped an eighteen-wheeler and spun off the shoulder, and when Fat Ace and his demon bitch Lucifer flipped into the air.
“Then I dragged his body out that wreckage hoping that he was alive just so I could kill him.” Python holds up his hands, balls them into fists, and then just stares at them as if he was amazed at their large size.
“Python?”
He snaps out of his strange trance to look at me, but I’m not sure that he sees me. “The minute I saw Fat Ace was still breathing, I thought, ‘Finally, I have him.’ I was going to put an end to all this clash of the street kings and all that rah-rah bullshit.”
I frown. “A lot of soldiers have laid down their lives for this ‘bullshit.’ Bitches like me have risked everything to marry into the game.”
“Makes us all fools, doesn’t it?”
Okay. He’s scaring me. “What in the hell has gotten into you? You’ve lived this street life since your momma squeezed you out while tryna rob a check-cashing place over off Lamar. Now you’re shitting on everybody? What the fuck is that about?”
“That’s just it! I don’t fuckin’ know! This whole Mason shit has my mind blown. What was up is now down and down is up. I feel like I’m in a Twilight Zone or something.”
“How did you leapfrog from beating Fat Ace’s ass to concluding that he’s your long-lost brother? I don’t get it.”
“He has the birthmark.”
“The . . . what?” I shake my head, still tryna clear it. “A birthmark? What th
e fuck? I can toss a quarter out the window right now and I guarantee you that I’ll hit two muthafuckas with a birthmark.” I laugh. “Damn, Python.You really had me scared there for a moment.” Relieved, I stand and wrap my arms around his neck. “That big gorilla was not your brother.”
Python’s expression remains hard as he shakes his head and unhooks my arms. “It’s the Carver birthmark. A small horseshoe on the left side of his neck.”
He twists his head so I get a better view of his own birthmark hidden in the six-pointed star tattoo. I’ve seen the birthmark before and even noted that Momma Peaches had the same one once. I remember noting that it was cute. I never thought it was hereditary.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” I insist, stubbornly, but not as forceful as before.
“Every Carver in my family has one—in the same place. What? You think it’s just a coincidence?”
“They do happen from time to time.” I’m grasping for straws, but what else can I do?
“All right.” Python flips open the wallet. “Then how do you explain this?”
“What?”
“Read the name on the driver’s license.”
“Python—”
“Read it.”
“Fine.” I scan the name and have a chill race down my spine. “M-Mason Lewis.” I swallow. “There’s got to be hundreds or thousands named Mason in the phone book.This . . . doesn’t prove—”
“Read the date of birth,” Python says, his voice softening.
I suck in a deep breath. “September 13, 1990.”
“My brother’s birthday.”
The room explodes into silence while my knees threaten to drop me on my ass. “I need to sit down.”
“You have no idea what kind of hell I’ve been through these last few months. I’ve been tryna deal with this alone, I lost Momma Peaches, two sons . . . you.” His gaze locks on me. “I really thought that I was going to lose you.” He kneels between my legs. “You can’t scare me like that again.”
I’m taken aback by Python’s naked vulnerability. My heart expands in my throat. “I—I won’t.”
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