The Hood Life

by Meesha Mink

  Once we step out of the ride and into the house, I instruct Destiny to take Corrine to the kitchen and find her something to eat. Lord knows she didn’t get shit at my mom’s crib.

  “I don’t babysit,” Destiny says, cradling her hands on her hips and giving me more attitude that I just flat-out don’t need right now.

  “You do whatever the fuck I tell you to do,” I snap.

  Destiny’s eyes bug the fuck out because I rarely lose my cool with her, but I’ll coldcock her like the man she is before I let her disrespect me and she knows it.

  “Fine,” she hisses through her teeth and turns on her ridiculously high heels. “Bring your ass on, Little Miss Sunshine.” She stomps her way toward the kitchen.

  Corrine’s confidence is dwindling by the second and she flashes an uncertain look my way before she follows Destiny to the kitchen.

  I, on the other hand, stroll off in the opposite direction; across the marbled foyer, through the expansive living room, and up a private back staircase for the short cut to the master bedroom. I enter the room just in time to see Renee sliding open her pussy’s thick lips to reveal her glistening pink pearl.

  I freeze with an instant hard-on, my mouth watering.

  Renee meets my eye with a wicked smile and reaches over to the nightstand to whip out a thick, twelve-inch, clear-colored vibrator. She turns it on and the shaft starts twirling columns of rotating beads. My baby’s hips roll in anticipation while she first dips the thick shaft into her mouth. She closes her eyes as if imagining the large toy as being the real thing. She gives the vibrating shaft a few good slurps before attempting to ease more inches into her mouth until the damn thing had to be rammed against her tonsils.

  It’s a damn sexy sight. Her bright candy-apple red painted lips, honey-golden skin, and naturally thick sandy-brown hair cascading curls across our black silk pillows. Hell, I want to fuck now and talk later.

  Expertly, Renee glides the vibrator out of her hot mouth and places the now wet shaft against her hard, dusty brown nipples. She only emits a small moan before forming a wet trail down the center of her curvy body and then into her juicy wet pussy.

  At first it’s just the tip and then she pulls it out and slides some of her thick glistening juices over her clit. Her husky moan has a way of sounding like a purring cat.

  She knows I love that shit.

  Greedily, she plunges the vibrator back into her sopping wet pussy. The sound of the whirling beads becomes a deep muffle. She pumps the fake cock; her pussy widens and starts talking back—nasty talk-smacking, gurgling, and whatnot. Renee swirls her hips, sliding more inches deep inside her. It’s a fucking amazing sight to watch her body swallow damn near eleven inches and even more amazing to watch the pleasure that explodes across her face.

  “Oh, shit,” she coos and then sucks air in between her clenched teeth. “Oh. Fuck. I’m. Cuuuummming!”

  There’s no mistaking when my baby girl cums. My baby is a squirter. Hot syrupy clear cum shoots off all over her play toy and drips down in between her thighs. Her hips are swirling like a tornado and amazingly she takes in a few more inches on her vibrator, which now sounds as if it’s drowning.

  Delilah, another one of my working girls, approaches the bed and smiles down at my wife. She lightly plays with the diamond stud pierced through Renee’s right nipple before bending down and taking it into her mouth. She gives it a few playful nibbles while drifting one hand down between her legs and slowly pulling out the long fake cock planted between Renee’s legs. To show how much a freak she is, Delilah takes the dripping wet cock and slides it between her pink frosted lips for a taste.

  “And cut,” the director shouts, and then removes the hand of the girl who has been steadily jerking him off during shooting. “Everyone take ten.”

  The small production team encircling the bed begins clapping. A few even whistle. But all of us have hard-ons strong enough to cut steel.

  Flashing her small fan club a bright smile, Renee climbs out of bed and pulls on a see-through, white lace robe and heads in my direction.

  “How’d I do, sweet?” she asks, leaning up on her toes to lay a kiss on me.

  I can’t help but fill my hands with her plump golden-onion booty for a good squeeze and rub my dick up against her sopping wet monkey. The way we get down, it would have been nothing for me to fuck her right here in front of the whole crew, but I have other pressing matters on my plate right now.

  “I need to holla at you for a minute,” I tell her, needing to stick to business.

  She stiffens and pulls back to meet my eye. “Sounds serious.” For the most part, Renee is what is typically described as a ride-or-die chick. When she’s down with someone, she is all the way the fuck down. But it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have her hot-button issues that can turn a pimp’s happy home into pure hell.

  Before I can open my mouth, Renee’s eyes sweep around me and her face immediate crunches up. “Who the fuck is she?”

  I turn around and see Corrine standing in the hall, her eyes big as fuck. “I thought I told your ass to stay in the kitchen.”

  Corrine backs up, looking like I just slapped the shit out of her.

  “Get the fuck on,” I snap, since she seems to be hard of hearing.

  She takes off then. Shit. I’ve been a father all of one hour and my “daughter” has met her ho grandmother, her father’s transvestite lover, and her pornstar stepmother. I’m sure to win father of the year with this bullshit.

  “Tavon,” Renee says and successfully draws my attention back to her. All playfulness has vanished from her eyes.

  “Who is that little bitch and why the fuck does she look like you?”

  5

  The Killer

  For ten years I’ve been rotting in this cage, convinced that I was in the bowels of hell. When I was first locked down, I felt and was treated like an animal. I strolled up in here with my fingers in the air and screaming “FUCK YOU!” to the world.

  Welcomed by my fellow Disciples also on lockdown, a nigga like me just thought he was home.

  Nigga.

  That’s how I used to view myself—how a lot of my black brothas view themselves. Once upon a time the white man enslaved us with that word and now we willingly do it to ourselves.

  Damn shame.

  Sitting up on the edge of my cot in the hell Georgia calls Jesup Federal Correctional Institute, a good thirty minutes before the morning wake-up call, I can’t believe this day has finally come. ’Course I haven’t served nowhere near the amount of time I should. I’ve put to sleep a few brothas the state hasn’t prosecuted me for, twelve, to be exact, but I’m not the confessing type—despite my finding the road to Allah.

  What can I say? Once an animal gets locked down, he has only two choices: prepare for hell or crawl in the opposite direction. I’ve crawled and now I’m ready to stand. I won’t lie and say I’m not worried about the temptation of the street, the lure of the hustle when I leave this place. In fact, that’s all I worry about, since I’m leaving today.

  Early release for good behavior. Now tell me that’s not a sign. I’m being given another chance and this time I’m going to walk the straight and narrow and be true to my girl Zoey.

  I glance up to her picture on the wall, and can feel a smile ease around my thick lips. Zoey and I go way back. I was her first and only. We hooked up in the eighth grade when she used to hang out at my man M. Dawg’s crib. I peeped her out because she curved in all the right places and knew all the words to World Famous Supreme’s “Hey DJ.” She tried to hold out, keep her legs closed. But after three weeks I hit a home run and rocked her world.

  After that, there wasn’t a damn thing she wouldn’t do for me. Make a few drop-offs, get rid of a hot piece, or lie her ass off about where her man was at the time of his latest crime. I loved her for that shit.

  I just didn’t know it.

  I might have been Zoey’s one and only, but at the time she was just one of many—too many
. I knocked up one chick and now have a twelve-year-old son running around. I used women like I used drugs. They were just a temporary fix to a deeply rooted problem. Problems I denied having.

  Her love scared the shit out of me. Parts of me kept hoping she’d wake up and see I wasn’t worth the pain. So I cheated, lied, used, and abused.

  And still she remained by my side—tears and all.

  So twelve murders, thirty-two robberies, countless aggravated assaults, and moving some heavy weight in and out of Bentley Manor later, here I am.

  I’m here because of a combination of those things, all except the murders, of course. Georgia’s three strikes law did what nothing else could do: it woke my ignorant ass up.

  Sometimes I can hear the devil laughing, telling me that he owns my ass and that I’m not fooling anyone. Those are the times I fall back on my knees and pray for hours. Only time will tell whether it’s enough.

  For most of my thug life and gangsta ways, I was young, dumb, and didn’t know any better. I could do like some of my brothers and blame my bad choices on whitey—big brother and the like but the truth of the matter is that it was my black brothas, the Disciples, who put the gun in my hand, taught me how to aim, shoot, rob, steal, rape, and get high.

  But in order to get in, I had to prove I was down. Let them know that I wasn’t scared and was ready to be a man—or what I thought defined being a man. So at fourteen I made my first kill.

  A boy in my own neighborhood.

  A random boy who happened to be on the wrong corner at the wrong time.

  Kadrian Johnson.

  The name is permanently burned into my head as well as the sight of him spinning around when my bullet hit his shoulder and then lifting off the ground when my second bullet hit his chest. He was dead before he slammed into the concrete. I learned later he was just fifteen. He and his family lived in the same hellhole I called home: Bentley Manor.

  Not only that, he looked like me. A lot like me.

  When I replay that night, my mind plays tricks and shows me shooting myself. That shit fucks with me.

  But I did it all for the same reasons that anyone does anything: love and acceptance. I grew up without a damn thing. Bentley Manor provided a roof, but my father left skid marks after making his sperm deposit and my momma, just fourteen years older than me, didn’t know nothing about raising a baby and dropped my ass in a Dumpster in the back of a Circle K gas station.

  There have been plenty of nights when I’ve thought the world would have been better off if I had died in that muthafucka.

  At least there would be a few more people still walking around today if I had. But once I get out of here, no one is going to call Demarcus Jones a fuckup anymore.

  That’s a promise.

  “Rise and shine, assholes!” Charlie, the prison guard on my block, shouts and starts banging on the prison bars like a BeBe kid on a red Kool-Aid sugar high. Everybody on the block hates his guts, mainly because the only difference between us and him is that he wears a uniform.

  Charlie controls everything from drugs to sex on the block. If you need anything from him, it’s going to cost you—usually some ass pussy. But I don’t get down like that.

  Period.

  When Charlie reaches my cell, he stops banging on the iron cage to sneer. “Well, Big Preacher Man. I hear today is your day.”

  I can’t help but crack a smile. That’s more than he usually gets out of me. Over the years we’ve clashed more than a few times. At six-two, he was blacker than coal and was as hard and tough as a walking brick building. In an ugly contest, I can’t think of a single soul who could beat him.

  At six-four, 235 pounds of raw muscles, I don’t need a gun to put nobody’s ass to sleep. That was the old me. Now folks around here just call me Big Preacher Man. Mainly because that’s all I do nowadays.

  Some laugh me off, some fake the funk, trying to psych out the parole board, and others, like me, are just downright desperate for answers.

  Back then I couldn’t understand how black folks could so readily accept the white man’s God. For hundreds of years they had used the Holy Bible as the means to justify the enslavement of a whole race of people while killing off another.

  That was just my ignorance talking.

  Now I see a lot of similarities in the Christian and Muslim faiths. The devil is in the details. It’s his weapon to keep brothers like me confused and in the dark. Growing up in Bentley Manor with a foster mother only interested in the government check that came along with me, I had no real concept of what love truly was. I thought it was the acceptance and brotherhood offered to me on the streets.

  I would’ve died for those brothers and they would have done the same for me.

  Charlie’s sneer deepens. “Boys and I got a pool going on you,” he says. Despite my not showing the least bit of interest, he continues. “See, I think you’ll be back in here in five months. Pete says a year and Big Earl has actually bought into your Holy Roller bullshit.”

  What was left of my smile melts off my face.

  He laughs. “What? You think I don’t know bullshit when I smell it?”

  He leans in and draws in a good strong whiff. “Ah, yeah. Freshly churned manure. That’s the kind of stench you can’t wash off.”

  The image of that old Dumpster behind the gas station leaps to the front of my mind. The devil trying to convince me what Charlie is saying is true. There are some things you can’t wash off.

  Instead of letting him bait me, I find my smile again. “Sorry, Charlie, but you’re going to lose this one.” I pick up my Quran and hold it up for him. “I’m a changed man.”

  “Four months,” he amends, laughs, and walks off to bang on the next line of bars.

  As the morning rolls on, I’m surprised Charlie’s words stay with me as well as his awful cackle. Around noon while I’m being processed for release, I catch sight of him again and he holds up four fingers and jiggles his eyebrows.

  I shake my head. He has me all wrong.

  An hour later, I’m finally handed my walking papers as well as the name and address of my new parole officer. Call me crazy, but when I walk out I swear the air smells fresher, tastes cleaner.

  However, the best part is seeing my baby, Zoey, climb out of a silver Toyota. She’s a thicker woman now. Her curves wider, her thighs and breasts larger, but her smile with the two raisin-sized dimples is still the same. While she runs toward me in a pair of tight jeans and a cloud-white, long T, I swear she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.

  “Demarcus!” she shouts, leaping in the air, her legs wrapping around my waist. I catch her with no problem, her warm body a welcome weight in my arms. “Oh, God, baby. I can’t believe this day is finally here.” She showers kisses all over my face. The few that land on my lips are like candy that melts in your mouth.

  “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I say and mean it. The fact that she’s here is amazing, since it was my attempt to kill her that landed me in the joint in the first place.

  6

  The Playa

  I used to talk mad shit about broke-down, busted, and disgusted Bentley Manor. I done seen some crazy shit go down in this motherfucker since I moved in with my girl a couple of months ago. But anytime you cram too many motherfuckers in one spot, you gone have shit poppin’ all day, every damn day. Shit, most of my other bitches either rented houses or stayed out in the boondocks in trailers. But right when I think of givin’ up this crappy motherfucker to sit up in a jail, I’m lovin’ Bentley Manor like a motherfucker.

  I reach up with shaky hands as I feel sweat run down the side of my face. It’s hot up in this brick motherfucker. And them bullshit-ass box fans we got ain’t doin’ shit but drawin’ in more of that muggy-ass Georgia heat. Right now my balls sticky as hell.

  I take another drag off my blunt as I watch through the dirty fingerprints on the window at bad-ass kids runnin’ around enjoyin’ their summer vacation
. Shaterica be talkin’ about having kids and shit. Say she want a baby boy that looks just as good as me. I can’t blame her but I damn sure can ignore her ass. The last thing I want is a child right now. I got to do me, and the white man cuttin’ into my funds on the regular is a fuckin’ problem. A major problem.

  Through the smoke comin’ up around my face I watch this head named Delia wanderin’ around the parkin’ lot with her eyes fixed on the ground. Bitch probably lookin’ for change or hopin’ to run across some money to help buy a hit.

  Back in the day, before that crack hit her ass hard I knew Delia from Hollywood Court projects. She was a badass bitch back then. Tall, red, ridiculous body, dressed to kill with a face that looked like it ain’t belong nowhere in this hood. I tried to holla at her and she made me feel like shit on her shoe. Well, payback is a no good son of a bitch. Went from Miss High and Mighty to a two-dollar crack whore. Ain’t life a bitch? Humph, now anytime I get two dollars—and I mean no more than two—I sneak my ass away from Shaterica and pay that mixed bitch them same measly-ass two dollars to suck my dick. And I mean nasty, too. Swallow up all my nut and lick it clean, too. The bitch works hard for the money.

  I feel my dick getting warm in my baggy jeans and I’m just about to go hit Shaterica’s money stash for two bucks when I see my girl’s Honda turn through the damn near tore-down wrought-iron gates. Just the bitch I been waitin’ on.

  Killin’ that motherfucker last night had me tense as a bitch and I can go for a Delia special for real. It’ll wait though. That crackhead bitch ain’t going nowhere…and neither am I. Bentley Manor is home…for now.

  I bite the tip of my blunt and watch Shaterica climb out of her car. Do I feel any guilt for what I’m about to do? No. Life is what it is and I gotta do what I gotta do. Fuck it. A nigga like me ain’t goin’ to jail and I mean that shit.

  I fucked up killin’ that motherfucker in the street like that. Right now the police could be out lookin’ for a black Honda. They might even have the tag. All of this could lead right back to me.