The Cook Up

by D. Watkins

  Like Angie, Faye had a white Jesus on the wall too. It’s like they gave that picture to every forty-plus black woman in my hood—probably in every hood. You couldn’t find a crib without Martin, JFK, and that Kenny Rogers–looking Jesus.

  “Big brova, I know how to do it, I just need you watch me! Feel me?” Dog Boy asked. I pulled a huge cup of Belvedere and removed my shirt. I never met a person who cooked crack with a shirt on. “Let’s do this,” I told him, walking into the kitchen. Long Tooth took notes.

  “Yo, your li’l ugly ass can get closer, you need to learn this too!” Block told Long Tooth, pushing his shoulder. Long Tooth inched forward. Dog Boy talked his way through the cook: “Add dis, add dat, whip dis, sprinkle dat…” Dog Boy whipped up a perfect looking batch. I thought he may have cut it with a little too much Arm & Hammer, but his rocks still looked really, really good.

  “Yeah, I see you cheffin’, Dog Boy! Good shit! But I’m catch y’all guys later, I gotta handle something!” yelled Young Block as he approached the door. He was always handling something or somebody. Dog Boy slapped the rocks on the table. The three of us sat in a circle and proceeded to bang up the work. Dog Boy used aqua blue tops and called his crack Big Dick and Li’l Dick. Big Dick was the dimes and Li’l Dick was the nicks.

  “Li’l brova, you callin’ your drugs dick and you get no pussy, you wanna tell me something? Dog Boy, are you eating pickle?”

  “Fuck you, Yo.” Dog Boy laughed. “I fucked my girl earlier!”

  We capped up every spec. I was proud of my little guys.

  “Yo, y’all want some girls?”

  “Sure,” they said. Long Tooth looked nervous.

  “Yo, you walk around with big-ass guns and sell a bunch of drugs! Relax, it’s time for you to start fucking too,” said Dog Boy as I popped a half Perk and washed it with the Belvey. Alcohol makes Perks feel 200 percent better. The three of us loaded up in my Benz. I had some girls that I could call who would be more than willing to date them if I asked, but I wanted them to score that night, so I took them to see the Knock ’Em Down Girls.

  Knock ’Em Down Girls were a group of teenage prostitutes who lived in a house on Erdman Avenue. I don’t know the history behind the Knock ’Em Down Girls or who originally coined the name; however, I knew that you could fuck for forty dollars and fuck someone really attractive for ninety dollars. This round would be on me, and I was treating them to nineties.

  We pulled up out front. The upstairs lights were off but the living room was bright. I saw shadows walking back and forth so I knew they were home.

  “Yo, if y’all don’t wanna do this, it’s cool. I’ll take y’all home,” I told them. I didn’t want to fuck anyone in there, but I wanted to treat them.

  “Man, I’ma suck a bone out one of dem pussies!” said Dog Boy, dipped back in the passenger seat.

  “Man, you crazy!” I said.

  I took a blunt out of my glove box and we hopped out. Three minutes of banging on the front door and big Doula opened up. Doula’s a house of a woman. Taller than me and wider than the three of us put together. Her arms were tree stumps, her back was an Escalade: she probably had to enter the door sideways.

  “Dee muthafuckin’ Nice! My li’l nigga!” she said. “You finally tryin’ get ya dick wet wat us, huh?”

  “Naw, not me, baby, tonight is about my young boys.” She rubbed her hands and invited us in. The house was clean and plain with no pictures; it looked like a model apartment or a Value City Furniture showroom.

  “Mickey! Key Key! Come on!” Doula yelled. In a split second two beautiful young women ran down; they looked twenty-something. The one on the left was fucked up on pills or drink—still prettier than any of the women I’ve seen work in that house before, even though she was high as gas prices.

  “Dog Boy, you should take the one on the left!” I recommended and he agreed. I didn’t want Long Tooth’s first time to be with someone who wasn’t completely present.

  “Long Tooth, wassup? You wanna do this? You got a rubber?”

  “Chill, Dee,” the girl said, “I got ’em.” She grabbed him by his hand and led him upstairs. “Ah baby, be gentle, it’s his first time!” I laughed. Long Tooth cut his eye at me in embarrassment. I waved him off. Dog Boy and his lady followed.

  I flopped on the couch. “Doula, wanna hit this blunt?” She walked my way and extended her arm. I passed her the jay and she took a long pull—a pull long enough to take a half inch off of the blunt. A pull only someone with jaws as big as hers could take.

  “Damn, girl, slow down!”

  A stampede of coughs and chokes poured out of her. I should’ve told her that I cut the blunt with hash. That shit hit like Tyson in ’89.

  “Hakkkkkkkk! Haaaaak! This some good shit, boy!” she moaned. Doula sat next me. We shared the blunt while I waited for my boys. Some other customers started rolling up. They had to wait outside until a girl was free.

  “How’s business, big lady?” I asked.

  “We gettin’ money like you, luv! Bout ta take my girls down black bike week in South Carolina, that’s six hundred dollars a dick down there!”

  Long Tooth ran down the steps with big eyes that wrapped his face. “Dee, you ready?”

  “Are you?” I asked.

  He wanted to go back in one more time. Doula and I laughed.

  “Don’t kill her!” she said. “We got other customers waiting!”

  STEEL SHARPENS STEEL

  Forget a blood connection, Nick and Hurk are my brothers. Fuck that, they are an extension of myself. Talk shit about Nick or Hurk and I’ll slap your face before you get the words out. If you’re bigger than me I’ll crack a Rémy bottle across the side of your dome. I remember when Nick played with toys and Hurk used to name the roaches in his crib so I can never front on them.

  “Yo, you need to rap to Hurk, man, ASAP!” Nick yelled through the gate three times straight. His pudgy fingers gripped the fence. We were down Bocek Park. Baltimore greats that turned pro like Sam Cassell and Muggsy Bogues used to play here back in the day, but no one fixed the court up. The pavement was cracked and uneven, and sometimes I had to kick the shit out of junkies so they would get up and let kids shoot around. The only new items in the park were the nets that my friends and I hung when we had hood versus hood games. We normally played for five hundred a head against surrounding blocks and other crews. Some girls will grill, blunts get passed, bottles get drained, and these events are normally peaceful. We had a hood game coming up in a few weeks so I’d been sneaking and trying to get a little practice in here and there. I was trying to get my jump shot working against some middle schoolers. Same form Bip taught me back in the day—bend your knees, flick your wrist, slap a rotating arc on it, and leave your form up as you watch the ball fall through the bottom of the net every time.

  I wanted to be a pro ball player way back when I was a kid but I grew out of that quickly. People don’t understand how talented professional athletes are. Being the best in your town or city or state isn’t enough. You have to rank among the top in the world. I wasn’t even the best in my house plus stupid dirt bike tricks and Pop Warner football mangled my left leg, making me walk like a seventy-year-old. So yeah, my hoop dreams deflated a long time ago.

  “We gone rap later, I’ma see him at Moe’s,” I told Nick.

  Later came quick on that day. I beat Hurk down to Moe’s. “Dee, how are you, my friend!” said a guy working the door. I gave him a pound, five dollars, and asked him to watch the car. They know me in Moe’s, because I’ve probably eaten there at least once a week since I was an infant. Moe’s is known for Maryland crab cakes. Maryland crabs are different from any other place in the world. We have a zillion big-ass blue crabs popping up in the Chesapeake Bay every day so seafood restaurants in Maryland can’t be skimpy on the crabmeat. Popular spots like Moe’s use huge pieces of jumbo lump and almost no filler. They were also known for a number different seafood dishes as well. I tried them all—except the o
nes with thick chunky mayonnaise-textured imperial sauce. There’s nothing more disgusting than imperial sauce. I’ll eat a woman’s ass, but I won’t eat imperial sauce.

  I grabbed a table near the bar. The server came out with double shot of Belvedere chilled. Hurk and his new bling strolled in. He was a walking jewelry store wearing too many chains to count. He also had some heavy bracelets that sparkled.

  “Damn, homie, you about to shoot a rap video?” I asked, waving the bartender. I needed another shot.

  “Yo, we playing in the hood game, right? A thousand dollars a head against them Perkins niggas. I’m bustin’ they ass, you hear me!” Hurk replied, loud enough for our whole side of town to hear. The waiter bought him some Belvedere too. I ordered a crab cake.

  “Yo, you ain’t getting no food?” I asked Hurk. He ate imperial sauce and ass.

  “Naw, man, I ain’t eatin’. I’m just telling you that I’m done with Madeira Street. Like if you buying from Rex, I got money and I can buy from Rex too. Feel me? No hard feelings, though, just this three-way split is dumb. I’m in this shit to win it. Feel me?”

  “I hear you, but I don’t feel you. We make each other better, we got each other’s back, man,” I said, trying to make eye contact, but he looked away.

  “Yeah, I know, I know steel sharpens steel and all that dumb shit, but I’ma do me. And you do you.”

  Hurk dropped some cash and slid. I sat a minute, had three or four more drinks. Stayed a while longer. I started this to make money with my friends, I thought, knowing I had just lost another brother.

  SWEET SONI

  Soni and I met at Jazzy Summer Nights, this outdoor jazz festival Baltimore had every first Thursday during the spring and summer months. You could catch anyone of any class or any color dancing, buying handmade jewelry, or like me—getting Len-Bias-on-draft-night fucked up. I’d throw some Perks in me, put on a new shirt, and then bang my liver with half a fifth of Belvedere before heading down with Dog Boy playing copilot. Sometimes Nick came down too.

  I felt like being out. The split with Hurk had been fucking with me. I really wanted to go and didn’t mind going alone, but some bodies had dropped recently and Dog Boy wasn’t letting me roll anywhere solo since the shootout.

  We hit the festival an hour or two after it started. Dog Boy had been drugging harder than me—popping dark green PlayStation epills like Altoids, but I was Mormon sober that night. The Advil bottle that I’d stuffed with Perks in my glove box was empty, and we hadn’t stopped for drinks.

  “Dee, no bottle? You ain’t cop no bottle? Shit, Yo,” said Dog Boy, dying of thirst.

  I reached into the backseat and grabbed the half bottle of Deer Park off of the seat. “Here, drink this, dummy, we’ll get wet when we get down there.”

  “Warda,” he replied with a coiled face.

  We hopped out of the car and I tried to hand Dog Boy some cash because we normally split up. He pulled a tennis ball–shaped bundle of twenties out of his sock, placed it in his sweatpants, and said, “I’m good, baby, put your li’l money away.”

  Me and Dog Boy combed the crowd—him looking for vodka, me people watching, and us both looking for girls. We bumped into Tank, an old friend from Perkins housing projects. He and Dog Boy instantly dived into conversation about New Balance’s best shoe or some other topic that I didn’t care about so I wandered. I walked past the main stage once or twice and peeked in at each and every concession stand. Everyone in the crowd wore grins; problem-free looking women in flowing dresses twirled while their soulful dudes in linen pants and open-toe sandals danced by their sides. I wondered what they all did for a living. Did they hustle? Was I the only one who cared about fluctuating coke prices? Could they tell that I sold drugs? I noticed Dog Boy from afar and easily would have been able to tell he hustled if I didn’t know him. He looked eleven years old, an eighty-pound teenager with Queen Elizabeth’s diamonds wrapped around his wrist, gleaming from here to wherever. Dog Boy, like me, would mix diamonds with loose Nike sweat suits or Louis Vuitton Damier print belts with Timbs. Only drug dealers mix and match fine European fabrics with apparel you can find in USA Boutique and the Locker Room.

  Dog Boy was still rapping to Tank. He positioned himself like he was firing an AR-15 while Tank gyrated with his eyes rolled back in his head—as if he was taking imaginary shots from Dog Boy’s imaginary gun—shit hood kids like us do when we’ve eaten one too many paint chips. Watching them act like that made me laugh while making the more reserved blacks uncomfortable. They always looked down on us and they always will.

  Fifteen minutes of strolling aimlessly through the festival and I had yet to get a number or a drink. I passed a few women who had been past my crib before—cute baby-faced brown girls infatuated with niggas that sling dope, baby-mothers of retired gangstas, county girls eager for a project tour, and women old enough to be my mother. Some would speak with that neck twist I loved while others showed me their middle fingers, but either way was cool—I valued my experiences with them.

  I grabbed a strawberry piña colada frozen umbrella drink from a stand not too far from the main stage and saw a new face—a woman that I’ve never seen before. She was standing alone, draped in Afrocentric fabrics and had about fifty bracelets on her right arm and none on the left. It was weird but kind of fly. I walked a little closer.

  Her Scotch-colored skin was flawless. I bet she never took a drink, tried a drug, told a lie, or had a problem—ever. I was never the guy who cared about skin color, especially inside of my own race. I’m addicted to all black women and twisted every shade from Pepsi-colored to flake-colored and light-skinned women who were bright enough to gain Klan acceptance. She was probably one of those back-to-Africa chicks, I thought, so I couldn’t approach her the same way I would roll up on these hoodrats. I’m literate, I’m kind of smart, I’m clean, I thought—fuck it, I’m going in.

  “Hey,” I said as I stood in front of her.

  “Hi, ummm,” she replied, looking over my shoulder. “You’re blocking the show. I’m kinda into it.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said, quickly moving to her left. Normally I would’ve had a clever response but I froze, and being extra nice was my natural instinct.

  “You wanna drink?” I asked, still looking for an in.

  “I don’t drink, but thanks. Wait. Are you serious?”

  “What?” I replied as I saw her looking at my necklace. I was wearing a diamond-cut Cuban link, with a Jesus-head charm hanging in the center. The crown of thorns had about three hundred diamonds and the eyes were Madeira-colored rubies.

  “Why are you wearing so many diamonds? Do you know where they come from?” It was hard for me to focus on what she was saying with those cosmic eyes staring straight through me.

  “It was a gift from my older brother. Too much?” I asked.

  She went on to tell me about Sierra Leone and conflict diamonds. She said that children lost dreams and limbs so that people like me and rappers could be blinged out in gaudy, pointless jewelry. I listened to every word she said. I never saw a person so passionate about something that they could never profit from. Soni went on to tell me that she was a college student and planned on going into the Peace Corps after graduation.

  I lied and said that I was going back to college in the fall. Then I quickly switched the topic to the impacts that Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party had on African American culture, pride, and black awareness, which basically means I told her everything I know, except my drug knowledge. She nodded like her head was on a string, while adding a feminist perspective. I was probably the only young dude in the city that looked like I represented the street but could hold a conversation about awareness and Black Nationalism.

  We exchanged numbers. I didn’t want to be too forward. She sparked a sense of negritude in me that I hadn’t felt since Bip died. I heard Dog Boy calling me as we parted ways. I turned around to get another glimpse of her before leaving the festival and caught her looking back too—ou
r eyes met again.

  “Yo, who that big head bitch, y’all related?” said Dog Boy.

  “Naw, she my new friend,” I replied while looking down at her number in my phone and making sure it was saved into my contacts—I was notorious for not saving numbers.

  “Okay, okay, let’s hit Scrawberries, tho. Dat’s where da real hoes at anyway. Fuck these bitches down here.” Strawberries 5000 was a nightclub on Route 40. The loosest of the loose women went there looking for guys like us—brash dealers who would aimlessly throw money at them. We were regular in there. We spent thousands when we came through. In exchange we never paid cover charges, could get kids like Dog Boy in, and were exempt from frisking.

  “Fuck is a scraw-berry? Strawberries, my nigga. Strawberries.”

  LITTLE DEBBIES AND AUTOMATIC WEAPONS

  The smell of fried hair and fuck clouded the air when I woke up around eight a.m. the next day. I rolled over and cracked the window to get the used, condemned smell out. Twenty missed calls flashed across the front of my Nextel—some from Gee, some from my aunt, and then some from a bunch of random people—but no Soni. A small, wasted, healthy ass attached to about three hundred dollars’ worth of fake hair slept at the foot of my bed, butt naked and hazel colored with socks on. She snored like her lungs were broken. Her gums were dark, but her teeth had orange plaque caked near the crown, like she ate too many Cheetos. We had all definitely been on that Cheetos and vodka diet the night before. About another $450 worth of fake hair attached to an even bigger, rounder dimply ass was stretched across the floor next to vomit and an opened box of Magnums—another night after Strawberries.

  I snatched the bottle of Belvedere of off my dresser, took two big gulps, and braced myself as it warmed my chest. I thought I would let the women sleep a little before I kicked them out. That was, if Dog Boy and Nick’s argument about religion didn’t wake them up. They had those dumb fights every morning.