On cue, Arzell shuffles up, naked, from the back of the house with a wide, goofy smile on his face and his fat sausage dick swinging in the air. “Hmmm. Something smells good,” he declares, clapping his hands together. When he rounds the corner to the kitchen, he stops dead in his tracks. “Grandma, what are doing here?”
Josie gasps and clutches a hand over her heart. “Lawd, have mercy!”
I snicker. “Now you see why I fucks with him, don’t you?”
“Go! Put! Some! Clothes! On!” Josie stomps her foot.
“Yes, ma’am.” Stunned and embarrassed, Arzell turns and rushes out of the kitchen.
“Breakfast will be ready when you come out,” I add, and cock my head to the side as I watch his firm ass muscles flex as he hurries out. “Sweet Jesus. You got some good genes running in your family. You hungry, girl?” I grab the syrup and butter and waltz back out to the table.
“I’m not playing with you, Peaches.” Josie marches behind me again. “You’ve crossed a line. This shit ain’t cool.”
I set everything on the table and then retrieve my cigar box, where I keep the rolled weed that Baby Thug had hooked me up with. The shit is off the fuckin’ chain. “For real, Josie? You’re working my nerves. As many of my niggas you done fucked back in the day, you might as well charge Junior back there to the game.”
“W-what?”
“Don’t act all fuckin’ tongue-tied now and spare me the shocked bullshit.” I light my fat blunt and take a hard tug before blowing the smoke directly in Josie’s face. “Now, if I made you think my ass was stupid all those years when you were creeping behind me and fucking all my leftovers, then my bad. But for real, most of that shit never bothered me. There are too many bitches going to war over these niggas, who are just going to dick us over anyway.”
Josie blinks at me. “But he’s my grandson.”
“All that’s important is that he ain’t my grandson.” I take a second toke and then pass the blunt over.
“Why can’t you fuck somebody your own age? Shit. You got Rufus milling outside your door like a lost cat. Why don’t you fuck him?”
“You fuck him. Why ride a colt when I can rock a stallion? Here.” I thrust the blunt at her again.
Josie glances down as if she’s thinking about refusing my peace offering. “You know I done stopped smokin’ that shit.”
“Girl, I ain’t offering it again, and you know you need this shit to help you with your glaucoma or whatever else you got going on. Stop being so high and mighty just because you hollering in somebody’s church nowadays.”
Josie hesitates another second and then snatches the blunt from my hand and sucks on the muthafucka so long that I’m convinced she’s trying to inhale the whole thing in one toke. I think about telling her that the shit is laced with some secret, potent shit, but I decide against it. Considering how old girl rolled up in my place trying to throw her weight around, she’s getting just what’s coming to her.
“Damn,” Josie croaks, passing the blunt back and holding the smoke in her lungs. “What the fuck?”
“Some good shit, huh?”
Josie wobbles on her feet. “Fuck. I need to sit down.”
I hide my smile but direct old girl back over to the table. “I’ll grab you a plate.” I disappear into the kitchen, and when I return, I get a good chuckle out of seeing Josie’s round head lull around her shoulders like a bottle top.
“What the hell is in that shit?”
“Don’t know. Baby Thug didn’t tell me,” I say. “All I know is that the shit is good.” I reach over to the platter of flapjacks and fork a few onto her plate.
Josie shakes her head.
“What?” I ask.
“You’ll never change.” She grabs a couple flapjacks herself. “You always eat this shit after sex.” Josie giggles and then catches herself. “That shit ain’t funny.”
“Then why the fuck are you laughing?” I know my girl is fucked up. I am, too. Despite all this bullshit, she’s still one of my best friends.
“For the record, I wasn’t always running up after your leftovers.” Josie shrugs. “It just happened the one time.”
“Yeah. But it was with my husband…”
Black Gangster Disciple Isaac Goodson was a mean muthafucka by way of Chicago. The minute he rolled into Memphis, supercop Melvin Johnson had him well within his sights and tried to take his ass down on the regular. But Isaac kept his shit tight and was always two steps ahead. The migration of national gangs was changing the game fast. Crack may have been destroying families and lives, but it was also fattening niggas’ pockets like nothing anyone had ever seen in the projects. Isaac not only had mad connections that kept his niggas caked up, but the nigga also must have had an inside man in the military with the amount and types of guns he got his hands on.
When niggas saw how much weight Isaac was pushing and how he invested in the community, they all started looking up to him. Recruitment into the Black Disciples exploded. Everybody got educated into the Folks Nation quick, fast, and in a hurry. Isaac was all things to all his people. He kept niggas’ pockets fat and stepped into the role as a father figure to a bunch of little niggas who never knew they daddies. And the women…sheeit. They lost they goddamn minds.
Isaac was thuggish fine: over six feet tall, bald headed with thick-ass muscles bulging on every part of his body and rumored to be rocking a Mandingo dick that put bitches to sleep. The minute I spotted his ass in his newly opened auto shop, my ass fell in love. Some real deep shit, too—like it was with Manny. Isaac talked big and did big things. He could outdrink a sailor and outsmoke a chimney, but he didn’t personally fuck with the hard shit he was slinging to the weak and the trifling. He kept it hood with his mind on his money and his money on his mind twenty-four/seven.
Who the fuck wouldn’t find that shit sexy as hell? And the feeling was mutual. When I waltzed through the door of that shop, he took one long look at me, smacked those fat, juicy lips of his together, and said, “I’m gonna marry you.”
I was used to niggas talking shit, but for some reason I believed that muthafucka said what he meant and meant what he said. Isaac came at the right time, since I was stuck raising Terrell after Alice up and disappeared and Nana Maybelle had passed on. Terrell needed a father figure, and as far as I could tell, there was no better candidate than Isaac. Two days after we first laid eyes on each other, Isaac moved into my small place off Utah Avenue. A week later, we were married down at the courthouse. I had lost Nana’s big crib due to back taxes, and I told myself that the move was just temporary until I stacked my money up—words to die by.
Terrell was used to niggas coming and going at my place, but he had never seen one of them move in and stay. He didn’t like Isaac at first, didn’t like having to share me all the time, and he didn’t understand why he always had to do what this nigga was telling him to do.
Isaac was patient with the boy, always talking to him and trying to teach him shit. The biggest lesson came one day when four-year-old Terrell was out playing in the yard. All of a sudden, he was screaming his fool head off.
I was scared shitless and raced out of the house. Isaac, too, hustled from somewhere in the neighborhood when he heard the screams. However, when we found out what Terrell was screaming about, we were both pissed and relieved.
“Damn, lil man,” Isaac said, approaching. “It ain’t nothing but a snake.”
Shocked, Terrell just stood there trembling as he watched the brown snake coil around a scrawny neighborhood cat and begin choking the shit out of it.
I moved forward to comfort my nephew, but Isaac stopped me. He approached a trembling Terrell and squatted down next to him.
“What you’re seeing there, lil man, is a beautiful thing. It’s nature. All species feed off one another in order to survive. Some are just more open and straight to the point with their shit. A man should always respect another’s hustle.” He draped an arm around Terrell’s tiny shoulders. “A real man lea
rns to embrace and conquer his fears—whatever they may be. You understand?”
Terrell chanced a look over at Isaac and then slowly nodded.
“Good.” He stood up and removed his gun from his waist. “What do you say we have a little something different for dinner tonight?” He smiled and then shot the snake.
Terrell jumped.
Isaac patted him on the back. “Remember: all species feed off one another—one way or another.”
I smiled. I was convinced more than ever that I had made the right decision marrying Isaac.
Six months later, I was still in love with Isaac’s gangsta ass, but the nigga definitely had a problem with keeping his big dick in just one pussy. Every time I confronted him on it, he would just respond with, “C’mon, Peach. You know those bitches don’t mean shit to me.”
“So why do you keep fuckin’ with them?”
“That’s just it. I fucks with them.” He’d wrap an arm around my waist. “But I make looove to you, Momma.” Then he’d suck on my bottom lip, brush his big cock against my pussy, and I would forgive and forget—until the next time. Out of all the women my man fucked, the one who hurt the most was Josie. True, she was going through a difficult time, she’d lost her husband in a fatal car accident, and she’d gotten hooked on crack shortly after. A lot of broke niggas who had been dying to fuck her since waaay back in the day now lined up to get they salads tossed or anything else they wanted for the low, low price of twenty dollars.
So why did Isaac want to dig Josie out when every muthafucka on the block was doing it? I could never get a straight answer on that shit, so I always suspected that Isaac’s feelings were something deeper than just a casual fuck. The shit hurt, but I wasn’t going to give up on my man over the shit—not yet anyway.
Around the same time I was fighting to keep my marriage together, I received a call from Alice. The girl had dodged a bullet after the botched robbery a few years back, because she convinced the police that she was just a customer who got caught up in the crosshairs. The police bought that shit because the security cameras in the place didn’t work. Shortly after, with her crack addiction in full effect, Alice dropped Terrell off for me to babysit and never came back. Now she was calling and pleading for me and Terrell to come see her in the hospital.
The answer should have been a “hell no,” but that old guilt landed hard on my shoulders again—or it never completely went away. The fact that my sister was fucked up in the head was my fault no matter how many times I tried to convince myself otherwise. So I loaded Terrell into the car and drove out to the hospital. It turned out that Alice’s great emergency was that she had had another baby—a small wrinkly little thing who clearly had healthy lungs if nothing else.
“Heeey.” Alice lifted a lazy smile when we walked into the room and then struggled to sit up. She looked like shit warmed over, and it was no surprise that Terrell took to hiding behind my prosthetic leg. “Wow. He’s so big now.” Alice cheesed, cocking her head and trying to get a good look at her oldest son.
“Yeah. Children have the tendency to grow,” I said sarcastically, and approached the small bed that my newest nephew wiggled and wailed from.
“Hey, Terrell. You want to come over here and say hello to Mommy?” Alice held open her painfully thin arms and pleaded silently with her watery brown eyes. She looked like she weighed about ninety pounds, and her matted hair clearly hadn’t seen a brush, let alone some shampoo and water, in quite some time.
I glanced down and tried to push him forward. When he tried to push back, I bent down and whispered, “Remember what Isaac told you about fear?”
Terrell blinked and then glanced over at his mom.
“Go ahead. Go on.” I gave him another gentle push, and he finally unrooted his legs and walked over to the hospital bed.
Alice lit up when she wrapped her arms around her son and rained kisses all over his upturned face. “Mommy has missed you sooo much.” She squeezed him tight. “Have you been good for your aunt Maybelline? Huh? Have you been a good boy?”
I rolled my eyes at my sister’s sudden maternal concern, but I wasn’t in the mood to start a fight. “What’s wrong with this little fella?” I asked. “He hasn’t stopped crying since we walked into the room.” I reached down and picked the runt up. “Awww. What’s the matter?”
My new nephew just kicked and screamed as if someone were torturing him.
“Who knows what the hell is wrong with him,” Alice said grumpily. “I don’t think that he’s shut up since the doctor smacked him on the ass.”
I frowned at Alice. What the hell was with that tone? Alice went back to hugging and kissing on Terrell.
“Awww, lil man,” I said. “It’s gonna be all right.” I pressed a kiss against the boy’s face and tried rocking him in my arms. “Screaming and hollering is no way to spend a birthday,” I joked. “Is your diaper wet?”
“No. And he ain’t hungry either,” Alice groaned. “He’s been here six hours and he’s already pissed at the world. Not that I blame him—I’ve been pissed about being here a long time myself.” She pressed another kiss against Terrell’s head. “You never cried like that when you were a baby,” she said. “You were a good boy.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My sister was getting at something.
“Can I hold him?” Terrell asked, staring at his little brother.
I smiled. “Of course you can, honey.” I walked over to the bed, still rocking the crying baby. “Now, you have to be careful with him,” I warned. “Hold out your arms.”
Terrell turned from his mother and held open his arms to receive his baby brother.
“Okay. Here we go.” I gently transferred the baby into Terrell’s outstretched arms. “Careful.” I settled the baby in his arms and then watched something amazing happen: The baby stopped crying.
Both Alice and I were stunned.
Terrell beamed a smile at his baby brother. “What’s his name?”
“Mason,” Alice said, smiling.
“Mason,” Terrell repeated, and then pressed a kiss against his brother’s forehead. For our small dysfunctional family, it was the happiest we’d been in a long time.
Arzell finally returns to the kitchen table fully dressed in black jeans and a fresh white T-shirt. “I hope y’all saved some food for me,” he says, slapping and rubbing his hands together.
I snap out of my bittersweet memories and flash my young lover a bright smile. “You know I got you, boo.” I wink and then cast my gaze over at Josie, whose disapproval has toned the fuck down with that good shit she is smoking.
“Let me get a hit of that, Grandma.” Arzell reaches over and grabs the blunt from her hand.
“Now this is what I’m talking about.” I wrap an arm around Josie and then Arzell and give them a big hug. “A family that smokes together stays together.”
“Amen,” Josie and Arzell testify. “Amen.”
23
Yolanda
Things are really looking up for me. Not only is my money starting to stack, but also Python is showing up at more of my performances. He thinks he’s being slick, but I’ve caught him peeping me out, so I make sure that I pop my ass just right and slither on the floor like one of his precious snakes to give him an idea of what I’m down for.
Baby Thug watches my shameless performance in the front row while tossing back one drink after another. Despite her disapproval of my working at the seedy club, Baby has yet to miss a single performance. After my private party in the VIP with McGriff and Tyga, she has to know I am on my way. My plan isn’t looking so dumb now.
Baby isn’t the only one in the set who has heard about me wildin’ out in the VIP. Niggas from miles around have heard about how I handled two monstrous dicks at one time, and they are now all trying to get they dicks wet with me. They show up in droves, raining money like none of the other dancers have seen before. I am the sex freak of the moment, and I’m eating the shit up. See me, be me, bitches.
<
br /> Now that Python is within my sights, I turn down the other offers for a private VIP show and just make bank off my new reputation by giving niggas a glimpse of my pretty pink monkey only when I’m working the pole. Hell, Baby is just as shook, watching me flash my pussy, as the other niggas strolling in from off the street. Her once-klutzy friend is now steadily building a fan base, and I am well on my way to making my dreams come true. If I can’t get Python, maybe I’ll cast my net on McGriff and snatch Kookie’s man.
I crawl to McGriff’s table with my thong buried deep into my round ass. I smile seductively as his gaze roams over my thick curves. McGriff is so turned on that he reaches down and squeezes his meat. I pop pussy in his face and watch this nigga go into a trance. Keeping my act going, I lick my lips and bury his head in between my breasts.
The club of niggas roar and applause. McGriff’s sneaky ass latches his mouth over one of my fat nipples and sucks like a newborn trying to eat.
Jealousy kicks Baby hard in the gut. She clenches the glass in her hand so hard that the muthafucka shatters. Even then, she doesn’t pull her gaze from the show I’m putting on.
McGriff reaches around and spreads my ass cheeks—wide. Niggas start getting out of their seats so they can get a better look at what my momma gave me.
“Oh my God. What happened?” the waitress asks Baby.
Until that moment, Baby didn’t realize that she’s still holding the broken glass and that she’s bleeding all over the table. “Fuck!”
She leaps up and storms toward the bathroom in the back of the club. While she picks glass out of her palm at the sink, she tries not to let her imagination go wild about what is happening onstage, but the shit is hard. The best thing is just roll up out of there, but she can’t get herself to do that either. Once she’s sure she’s gotten all the glass out of her hand, she runs cold water over it and wraps her blue bandana around the deep gash before heading back out into the club.
I see Baby just as my number is up, and I grab the last remaining dollars off the floor.
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