Addicted to a Dirty South Thug

by Shan

  My forehead wrinkled in confusion as I hopped up, grabbed my keys and my phone, and headed out of the office. I stopped by Lisa’s desk and told her that I was thinking—that Deonna was probably stuck at the school and was unable to answer her phone. Once I made it to the parking garage and got inside of my car, I dialed Deonna’s number again, but I still didn’t get an answer.

  I drove out of the garage and headed toward Chanel’s school. I was thinking about calling up Khi and sitting down with him to talk about what Deonna had told me. I did need to swallow my pride on that one and let Khi know that he was right. Our brother did need our help, and somehow, we had failed him. I thought back to the many times when this shit could’ve happened and realized that it was plenty of times that Uncle LeeRoy could’ve violated Dae in the way that was being said. Our mama and daddy would drop us off plenty of times with our grandmother for her to babysit while they ran the streets. LeeRoy’s ass had always been a drunk and had never really worked a job long enough to amount to shit. He had stayed with his mama damn near forever, and I had never heard her bitch one word about it.

  When our father got locked up and we moved in, he was always there and always getting drunk. He would sit out on the porch with us some nights, smoking weed and shit like that, and now that I really thought about it, he was a quiet, weird-ass nigga. I never knew why somebody wanted to kill him when they found him in the alley of the liquor store, because he never bothered nobody, but now I knew that shit all fell back on Dae.

  I couldn’t help but wonder about the li’l one, our youngest, Emon. I didn’t give a fuck how he felt about it. I was asking Emon on my next visit to see him. I needed to know if anything had happened to him as well.

  As soon as I turned down the street where Chanel’s school was, my phone vibrated in my lap, and I quickly scooped it up, thinking it was Deonna. I noticed it was an unknown number. Hesitantly, I answered, because I didn’t know if it could be Deonna calling because something had happened to her phone.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Aye.” It was Dae. “That nigga set me up, man!”

  “Who set you up?”

  “Your bitch-ass brother. That ho poisoned a nigga, bruh. Man, twelve all around my front door, and I swear, nigga, I’m on some suicide-type shit right now,” Dae cried. “My brother did that shit. I know he did, KaeDee. Call him, man. Call him. He won’t even answer for a nigga, ’cause he know what he did.”

  “What the hell is you talking about, Dae, and where are you? We’ve been waiting on you to get in contact. Nigga, you got that girl with you? Is she straight?” I questioned as I pulled up to Chanel’s school and parked out front. I got out of the car and looked around, but I didn’t see Deonna’s car.

  “Man, the girl carrying my seed, and I called to check up on her and tell her I was sorry for how I did her. I felt bad for fucking her up like that, and shit, I thought about the last bitch that led me on the way I led her on, and I knew exactly why she was acting the way she was. I had to reach out. She begged me to come down here where I was at, and we cool. She good. I promise, I’m taking care of her. But look, man, tell Khi I’m sorry, man. Tell him to call these dogs off. I promise I’m getting my life together. I can’t be a part of no chain gang, man. I’m scared of that shit, man,” Dae cried, and I sighed.

  “Look, they probably there because they trying to get ol’ girl and send her back home. Just calm down and see what they want,” I told him.

  I could hear him breathing heavily over the phone as I looked across the street to the lot that was used for the school’s parking overflow. I spotted Deonna’s BMW still parked in the lot and made my way across the street as soon as a few cars had passed.

  “Nah, I sent her out there already, because I didn’t want her getting hurt. They here ’cause that bitch got in Khi’s head and told them that I murdered her sister Alaska. They out there yelling for me to come out and be arrested for that shit or they coming in. I ain’t going out like that, nigga. I can’t let them take me in, KaeDee! Just tell Khi even though he chose that bitch over me, I love him. And tell Emon and Cass I love them too. And, KaeDee—”

  “Come on, Dae, don’t be like—” I froze when I spotted Deonna slouched over in her car.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  I could hear the loud banging through the speaker of the phone, but it fell from my hand and shattered against the pavement as I took off running and pulled Deonna’s car door open. A gun rested in her hand, and there was a hole in the side of her head.

  “Oh, fuck!” I cried as I pulled her out of the car. “Deonna, Deonna, why would you do this, baby? I forgave you! I forgave you, ma.”

  I carried Deonna’s limp body in my arms as I walked through the parking lot and headed back to my car. People started appearing from different directions and trying to help me, but I just wanted to get her in the car and get her to the hospital. I didn’t understand this shit. I had told her that morning that she didn’t have to worry about nothing, and she told me she loved me. Why would she do this? Why would she kill herself knowing we have a daughter and she was carrying my seed? Something wasn’t right, and I refused to believe that this was what she resorted to. She just thanked me for giving her her life back, so why would she take it from me?

  Chapter 30

  Khian

  “Tell that nigga Tamar to get at me, man, for real. I did my part; now I need him to fuck with me,” I said desperately into the phone.

  “He ain’t trying to hear that. The nigga ain’t dead, so for him, you ain’t did shit,” Tamar’s goonie Black said, and I sucked my teeth. “He knows your brother is a lawyer, and y’all ain’t gonna do nothing but defend that nigga and he’ll be home.”

  “Bruh, I just snitched on my li’l youngin’, nigga. I turned that nigga in for murder, and that nigga Tamar’s sister should be home in a day or two, and you telling me that’s still not enough for this dude? He should’ve fuckin’ found him then! I wasn’t about to pop my brother for him. Fuck I look like?”

  “But, nigga, who the fuck you yelling at, though?” Black said.

  I pulled the phone away from my ear and tapped the end button. I punched my fist into the steering wheel and gritted down on my teeth. I had dug up everything I could on Cuba’s sister Alaska and her boyfriend Bryson’s murder after verifying the date it happened with Cuba. I knew, after finding out that Dae had Taylana with him, that nigga was never going to change, and I wasn’t about to keep putting myself out there. I didn’t have it in me to put a bullet in the nigga, but shit, after the way I was feeling right now, if that nigga was there in front of me, I would empty the clip in his ass. Ho-ass nigga.

  I ain’t know what the fuck I was gonna do about this dope shit, because didn’t nobody have that fish scale like Tamar, and I refused to go through some low-level niggas just so they could tax my ass. I just had to tough this shit out and wait for that nigga to come around.

  “You couldn’t get your ass out to greet a nigga?” my big bro Cassidy said as he opened the driver’s side door.

  I had been so deep in my thoughts that I halfway forgot that I was out there waiting for this nigga. I stepped out of the car and slapped hands with him twice before he pulled me into a hug. It had been a few months since I had been down there to see him, because I knew he would be coming home soon anyway. Since then, either I had gotten small, or that nigga had gotten big as fuck. Either way, I was happy to see my brother finally standing on the other side of them walls.

  “Bruh, what the fuck you been in this bitch doing? Man, it ain’t been that long since I been down here,” I told him as I looked him up at down. Cassidy was about six foot two, looking like he weighed at least 240 pounds. He had the same skin tone as the rest of us, but Cassidy had some weird-ass eyes—one dark brown, and the other a light hazel brown. He had been born that way, and Mama always said he was the special one because of it. He had some long-ass hair that he mostly kept wild and unkempt, but them hoes loved his dog ass.

>   “What, nigga? I had to beef up for these hoes. It’s been four years since I had some pussy, and I had to make sure my stamina was up. No more FiFis, nigga,” Cassidy said as he dropped a ball into my hand that looked like rubber gloves that had been blown up and tied together.

  He walked around to the other side of the car to get in, and I stared down at it, with my face suddenly turning into a frown. I looked across the hood of the Mazi at him. “Cass, what’s a FiFi?” I asked him, and he laughed.

  “That’s my bitch Jessica. I ain’t been fucking her that long now. Probably about two weeks now,” he said.

  Once I realized what he was saying, I dropped the shit out of my hands and kicked it across the ground. I wiped my hands across my shirt before I pulled it over my head and tossed it at Cassidy.

  “Ho-ass nigga. I see your ass ain’t changed, you bitch.”

  I shook my head, got in the car, and cranked it up. Pulling away from the jail, I wished this would be the last time I would have to see that place, but Emon was still there for another year, and it was about to be Dae’s home. He had been hiding out in Colorado with that damn girl, but I knew that as soon as they got his ass, they were sending him back to Texas to face his charges.

  The way I felt about what I did toyed with me. In a way, I felt like he deserved it, but after picking up Cass that day and knowing I would be back soon to get Emon, I didn’t want that for Dae. I just wished that nigga would’ve gotten right. I really fuckin’ tried, and that shit just frustrated the hell out of me that I couldn’t get it right.

  “So, what’s up? Where Dae and KaeDee at? I was expecting to see all y’all niggas.”

  “I ain’t really been talking to KaeDee. Think it’s been a couple of weeks since we last spoke,” I told him, and I could see him turn to look at me out the corner of my eye.

  “What? Why, nigga?” He pulled his hair out of his face and frowned.

  “Just a bunch of shit that happened with Dae, and that nigga acting like he didn’t give a fuck really pissed me off. I mean, shit, it’s a lot of stuff going on, Cass, and with it being your first day being back, I don’t really wanna put that burden on your shoulders like that.”

  “Is everybody all right? I should’ve known something was up when none of y’all had been down here to see a nigga in a while.”

  “Just been trying to set shit up for you for when you came home, and then shit just seemed to spiral out of control all of a sudden. Like, all at once. If you hadn’t called me a few days ago, nigga, I would’ve honestly forgot all about picking you up today. That’s how bad it got, bruh.”

  “I don’t understand. What Dae still fucking up? I mean, you ain’t saying shit, nigga. Tell me what’s up.”

  I sighed and filled Cassidy in on everything that had been going on. By the time I finished telling him—of course, leaving out the part where I had snitched on Dae for Alaska’s murder—we were back in the city and pulling into a gas station.

  “So, you got two bricks left and no plug?” Cassidy asked, sounding as depressed as I felt. “And Dae hiding out somewhere with a bitch that he damn near beat to death that just so happens to be the plug’s sister?

  “Hell, yeah, only two left. And that nigga won’t be out there too long before something or somebody catches up with him. I tried my best with him,” I told him and got out of the car to pump the gas.

  “Hey, here. Somebody named Cuba calling you,” Cassidy said through the window as he handed me the phone.

  “Hello? What’s up, baby? You good?” I said after pumping the gas and getting back in the car.

  “Look, you need to tell me what I need to know so that I can change the code to your gate. Somebody just walked up to the door and dropped another yellow envelope on your doorstep just like the last one that was left. I walked over to put it where the other one had been sitting all this time and realized you didn’t even open it. So, I opened it for you, ’cause I felt kind of strange after seeing that man walk away from here like that. Anyway, it’s just a bunch of photos of your crazy-ass baby mama and pictures of some little dope baggies that got the word Allah marked across it. I don’t know what that they trying to say, but I figured maybe you would understand.”

  “Pictures of which baby mama?” I asked as I cranked the car and frowned.

  “Of Sele—”

  “Aye, bruh, what the fuck?” Cassidy yelled as I dropped the phone from my hand and reached for my pistol.

  “Get down, get down!” I yelled as a barrage of bullets came flying our way. All I could think about was Dae was still fuckin’ shit up for me. I had been so busy with trying to straighten out the mess that he created that I had forgotten about checking into Selena and finding out if she had something to do with us being hit that night. Not only that, but them muthafuckin’ Arabs had finally come for their payback for the shit that Dae had caused.

  I should’ve just killed that nigga, I thought as I kept my head down, put the car in reverse, and smashed on the gas.

  Scrreeechhh!

  To Be Continued in Addicted to a Dirty South Thug 2, coming soon!