Eastside

by Caleb Alexander

“That’s good. Now come on in here and call your mother. She’s been worried sick about you. They been shootin’ over in them damn Courts again.” Chicken shook her head and frowned. “I don’t know why Elmira insists on staying out there, when she can come and live with me, or Vera, or Gina, or a hundred other people. She’s just so damn prideful and stubborn!”

  She pounded her two tiny fists together. “Times like this, I just get mad at her!”

  Travon walked inside, lifted the telephone, and dialed his mother’s number.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Hello?”

  “Momma, it’s me, Tre. What’s up? Chicken said that you was worried about me.”

  “Oh, baby, I just wanted to hear your voice, and make sure that you was all right. V said that you left early this morning, and that she hadn’t seen you since. Plus, Miss Martha told me that they had a great big old shoot-out over here earlier.”

  “Oh,” Travon said, hesitating for several moments, before finally regaining his composure. “Naw, I’m doing fine. I just ran around the corner to kick it for a while.”

  “Well, they say that Quentin got shot in the stomach, and that Smoke got grazed in the head. The bad part is, Miss Elly’s granddaughter got killed.” Elmira sniffled, trying to hold back her tears. “I know what that woman is going through right now.”

  Travon could not speak.

  “The police are saying that it was them Crip boys that did it, and that it was just a gang shooting. Them the same group a boys that they say shot your brother, and they ain’t got them boys yet. They need to close that damn East Terrace down, and put all them boys in jail! Oooh, Tre, baby, it’s on TV right now! Channel Five, hurry, baby!”

  Travon lifted the remote and turned the television on. He quickly flipped to Channel Five News and turned up the volume.

  The news showed footage of Quentin lying on a stretcher and throwing up gang signs as the paramedics loaded him into an ambulance. The news cameras then cut to Smoke One, who was seated on the curb, holding a large blood-stained bandage to his forehead.

  “Another shooting on the city’s Eastside occurred today,” the anchorman announced to the audience. “This one happened in the city’s Wheatley Courts housing projects. It left two wounded, and one child dead.”

  The camera cut to footage of a woman holding a little girl’s limp body, while screaming hysterically.

  “Tre,” Elmira called to her son over the telephone. “Tre.”

  “Hold on, Momma, let me cut the TV down.” Travon lifted the remote control and silenced the television. “Okay, I’m here.”

  “Boy, you say something when I’m talking to you,” Elmira told him.

  “Momma, the night Too-Low died, he told me to hold some money for him. I been holding it, but…Momma, I know that he would want you to have it. It’s enough to buy you a car. You could work the day shift, and do home visits, and make enough money to get out of there. Momma, I could move back home and help out, and you wouldn’t have to take the bus no more. We could probably be out of the Courts in a couple of months.”

  “Tre, honey, all this time you and your brother been sticking money in my purse, and pretending like I didn’t know, what did you think that I was thinking? Did you think that I believed in the Good Fairy? Tre, I know that you mean well, but I don’t want your brother’s money. Buy you a car, buy you some school clothes, or take your Aunt Vera out to eat. Have fun with it, it’s yours now.”

  “But, Momma! You could buy you a car, and you wouldn’t have to ride the bus at night, and then have to wait all morning until they start running again!”

  “It’s dope money, Tre!” Elmira shouted. “It’s poison! I don’t want your brother’s blood money. I have never complained about riding the bus, not once, have I, Tre?”

  “But, Momma.”

  “Tre!” Elmira cut him off. “Do you know what I did with your brother’s money?”

  Travon remained silent.

  “I saved it! I saved all of it, and I used it to bury him. I paid for his funeral with it. The same money that he got from putting people in the ground, I used to put him in the ground!” Elmira shouted. She began sobbing heavily. “I took his death money, and I paid it to the funeral home, and I buried my child! I buried my child,” she repeated softly.

  “I’m sorry, Momma,” Travon whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  Elmira sniffled. “Don’t be sorry, baby, just do something for yourself. That part of our lives is over now, Tre. Now go on with your life and do something for yourself. If you really want to help Momma, then go to school and graduate. Become a doctor, or a lawyer, or something. Make me proud.”

  “But I want to help you now.”

  “Baby, I know, and I love you for it. If you want to help that much, then go to school in the daytime, and get a job working after school. We’ll open us an account together, and we’ll both put money into it. We’ll use it to buy a car, so I can work in the daytime and get my ass outta these Courts. Then you can come and live with me again. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds good,” Travon told her.

  “All right, baby, I got to go and get ready for work. But I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Okay.”

  “’Bye,” Elmira whispered softly. “I love you, baby.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Travon placed the telephone receiver down into its base. With his thoughts still on the conversation with his mother, he rose from the living room couch and slowly walked to the front door. He stood silently, peering out of the dark screen door, not ready to be seen or partake in the conversation between his Aunt Chicken and the others, who were now seated around the front porch.

  “Anybody ever tell you that you are finer than a motherfucka, Mrs. C?” Lil Fade asked.

  “Boy, go on!” Chicken replied. “I’m old enough to be your mother.”

  “Say, they don’t make women like you no more, Mrs. C,” Lil Bling told her. He lifted his bottle of beer to his lips and took a long swig from it. “You can cook, you clean, you work, you stay in shape, and you down.”

  “What, you think that just because I got kids, I’m supposed to be an old fogey? I know what’s up.” Chicken smiled, and walked to where Big Pimpin was standing. He had both hands hidden behind his back. Chicken wrapped both arms around him, as if she were about to give him a seductive embrace, and then stepped back, holding the joint that he had been trying to hide. Holding it in the air like a cigarette, she turned and sashayed away from him, switching her curvaceous hips. On the way back to her spot on the porch, she lifted the joint to her full red lips and drew from it.

  “Momma!” Romeo called out to her. “What are you doing smoking weed?”

  “I smoke weed all the time. Or at least whenever I can steal it from your brother’s hiding spot in the backyard.”

  Capone’s cheeks flushed red with embarrassment, and he quickly shifted his gaze to the ground.

  “Haaa, Mrs. C is down, boy!” Lil Fade shouted.

  “Say, Mrs. C, I wish my moms was down like you,” Lil Bling told her.

  “Where is that little girl you was talking to?” Chicken asked. “What was her name? Niesha? I like her, she is so sweet, and cute too.”

  Lil Bling shook his head. “Man, she be trippin’, Mrs. C. She don’t want to give me none. She talkin’ about wait until she thinks it’s right.”

  Chicken leaned back against the porch banister. “Why should she? All those girls you be messin’ with. Boy, what if you gave her something, or got her pregnant? You ain’t got no job, no house, no nothing.” Chicken pointed toward his thick gold herringbone necklace. “And that little hustle you got, it ain’t gonna last too long.”

  Chicken waved her well-manicured hand at Lil Bling, dismissing him. “Boy, you crazy, that ought to be the one you want to keep. That tells you that she ain’t no hot-tail little girl.”

  Lil Bling nodded. “Yeah, Mrs. C, I know you right. I’ll just hang on to her, and dip with somebody else.�
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  Chicken slapped him across his shoulder. “Boy, that ain’t what I said!”

  The boys gathered around the porch broke into laughter.

  “Mrs. C got all the answers,” Lil Fade declared.

  Chicken puffed on the joint, and exhaled seductively into the air. “I’m thirty-six years old, with a nineteen-year-old daughter, an eighteen-year-old daughter, a seventeen-year-old son, and a sixteen-year-old son. Child, I do not have all of the answers. As you grow older, you’ll make mistakes, but you’ll learn from them.”

  Travon opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. If his Aunt Chicken wanted to play the wise old sage, then he had a problem that he wanted to present to her.

  “Aunt Chicken, Momma be trippin’,” Travon announced. “I tried to give her some money that Too-Low left, but she won’t take it. Can you talk to her for me?”

  “Tre, baby, your momma is very proud, and very stubborn,” Chicken told him. “She’s been that way since we was little girls. If she don’t want to take the money, ain’t nothing I can say that will change her mind.”

  Travon shook his head and looked down.

  “Tre, the only thing that I can tell you is to get a job and give her the money little by little, like you’re getting it from your paycheck,” Chicken added.

  Travon lifted his head and smiled.

  “El don’t have to know how much you make, or where the money is really coming from, sweetie,” Chicken continued. “Hell, you can just tell her that you got a job, and give it to her little by little.”

  Travon squinted and peered off into the distance. Damn, he thought, she really did have all the answers.

  Lil Fade turned up the volume on the CD player, and Chicken quickly made her way onto the grass, where she began dancing.

  “Say, Mrs. C,” Lil Fade called out. “Anybody ever tell you that you look like Vanessa Williams’ identical twin?”

  “Child, Vanessa’s titties and ass ain’t as big as mines,” Chicken replied.

  “Momma! You need to cut that shit out!” Romeo yelled.

  Chicken smiled devilishly. “It’s the truth.”

  Travon seated himself on the porch banister and examined his Aunt Chicken. Today, she was wearing tight-fitting, low-cut, faded blue jeans, red furry slippers, and a red half-shirt that exposed her tight, muscled midsection. Her sandy hair was pulled back into a long, silky ponytail, and her natural green eyes sparkled like emeralds every time the sun struck them. For the first time in his life, Travon realized just how beautiful his Aunt Chicken really was. And as she began dancing and moving around provocatively to the booty-shaking song that was playing on the radio, Travon came to one more conclusion. His Aunt Chicken really was fine as hell.

  “Damn!” Lil Fade cried out, watching Chicken dance.

  “Damn!” Big Pimpin agreed.

  “Damn!” Lil Bling shook his head.

  Travon saw a different side of his aunt that evening. It was a side that had always been there, but one that he had paid little attention to. She really was down, he thought. She was cool, understanding, and eternally youthful. She was someone he could trust, someone he could talk to, someone who would listen, and understand, and have his best interest at heart. A new level of respect was found that evening, as well as a new ally. Aunt Chicken was the shit.

  CHAPTER TEN

  In a House on Colorado Street

  “Hand me the Pyrex,” Darius told him.

  Travon walked to the kitchen table, grabbed a long glass dish, and handed it to Darius. Darius took the dish, poured half a kilogram of cocaine into it, and then walked to the sink. He sat the Pyrex dish on the counter next to him, then opened a cupboard and removed a glass. He filled the glass with lukewarm water and then handed it to Travon, who was standing just behind him, watching his every move.

  Darius grabbed the Pyrex dish from the counter and carried it to the kitchen table, where he sat it down. Travon followed with the glass of water and placed it next to the Pyrex dish.

  “Open that box of baking soda on the counter, and bring it here,” Darius commanded.

  Travon did as he was told. Darius poured some onto a triple beam scale, which had also been sitting on the table. He turned to Travon.

  “This is about how much baking soda you need for a half a key.”

  Travon nodded.

  Darius lifted the Pyrex, and held it near the scale. He then gently raked the baking soda into the dish with the cocaine, whereupon he carefully stirred the mixture with his index finger.

  “Tre, hand me that spatula.”

  Travon lifted a rubber spatula from off of the counter and placed it in his cousin’s waiting hand. Darius sat the Pyrex dish on the table and carefully began to add water from the glass, all the while stirring gently with the spatula.

  “Cut on the two burners on the left side,” Darius ordered, pointing toward the stove.

  He continued to nurse his mixture, stirring gently, and adding water when necessary. When finally his mixture reached the desired consistency, he carried the off-white, pasty substance to the stove, where he placed it on top of the two lit burners. He then turned and smiled at his cousin.

  “I’m the best at this,” Darius boasted.

  On the stove, his pasty mixture began to melt into an oily, yellowish liquid, as he stirred with increasing speed.

  “Tre, hand me that jar that I brought from the house,” Darius ordered.

  Travon lifted the jar into the air and examined it. “What is this shit?”

  “That’s how we win, boy!” Darius announced excitedly. “It’s vitamin B-12. It blows up the dope, so you get more. It’s like putting yeast in a biscuit. Don’t worry, I’m gonna teach you how to win! If it’s one thing your kinfolk is, it’s a winner.”

  Darius poured some of the powdery substance into his oily mixture, and stirred until everything was blended perfectly. Then he turned off the burners on the stove.

  “We gotta let it cool down now,” he told Travon. “Then we’ll cut it up, weigh it, and bag it.”

  One Hour Later

  Travon and Darius removed the hardened substance from the stove, and placed it on a large plate that was sitting on the table. Also on the table was a scale, several other plates, a bag of razor blades, a box of sandwich bags, and a large plastic grocery sack. Darius removed one of the razor blades from the bag, and peeled off its protective paper cover.

  “Now is the fun part,” Darius announced.

  Marcus breezed into the room carrying a large bucket, which he sat on the floor next to Darius.

  “What’s that for?” Travon asked, pointing at the bucket.

  “It’s acid,” Marcus told him. “Just in case the task force tries to run in on us.”

  “Yeah.” Darius nodded. “We can dump this shit in a hurry. This is about a life sentence in the Feds, and I ain’t trying to give them hoes that long. I really ain’t trying to give ’em nothing!”

  Marcus left to resume his station at the living room window. Travon and Darius turned their attention back to the hard, brittle substance on the table.

  The crack was sitting on a plate, in three large, thick, yellowish-white slabs. Darius took two slabs and put them on a separate plate, to get them out of the way. He then took his single-edge razor blade and began to cut on the third. Each cut with the tip of his blade made the substance snap precisely into several large pieces. He placed each piece on the scale, and then cut or added smaller pieces until the scale read twenty-eight grams.

  “Tre, bag these up as I give them to you. Each one of the sandwich baggies will have an ounce in it.”

  Travon removed the pieces from the scale, placed them into a small plastic sandwich bag, and tied the bag up tightly. He then took a razor blade, peeled off its protective paper cover, and used it to cut off the excess plastic from each of the sandwich bags.

  “It’s still a little bit wet,” Travon told Darius.

  “I know it ain’t all the way dry, that’s why w
e’re baggin’ it now. We want to keep in as much of the moisture as possible, because that’s part of how you win. If they weigh it, it’ll come out to twenty-eight grams, because of the water. But it’s not really twenty-eight grams of dope. Them fools is paying for the water too!” Darius howled a sinister laugh. “I’ma teach you all the tricks of the trade, so that you can come up.”

  Darius turned his attention to the table, where he counted out twenty-six ounces, each bagged separately. He lifted eight of them into the air.

  “These are the overs, Tre,” he announced. “I’ma give Marcus one for looking out, and I’m a take three for cooking. These twenty-two are yours. We gotta give the dope fiend all of the crumbs for letting us cook here.” Darius pointed to a plate full of small white chips. “That’s about a sixteenth right there. That ought to keep his ass happy.”

  Travon lifted the ounces up to the light and examined them. “What do you think I ought to charge for each one of these?”

  Darius shrugged. “Shit, charge seven hundred to the homies, and seven fifty or eight to the rest of them niggaz. Ain’t nothing out there right now but boo-boo, for four and five hundred.”

  Travon quickly calculated the figures inside of his head. Seven hundred dollars, multiplied by twenty-two, was fifteen thousand, four hundred dollars. Plus, another thirty-five hundred dollars for the ounces that Dejuan had given him, and the six thousand dollars in cash that he found in his brother’s room, made twenty-four thousand, nine hundred dollars. It was a car and a down payment on a house for his mother. But, what if he didn’t get rid of it in bulk? What if he broke the ounces down to twenty-dollar pieces, and sold those pieces himself? How much could he make then?

  “D, how much do you think I could make if I cut these up, and sold them stone for stone?”

  “Shit!” Darius recoiled. “Probably about two Gs apiece.”

  The mathematical side of Travon’s brain shifted into overdrive once again. Two thousand dollars, multiplied by twenty-seven, was fifty-four thousand dollars, plus the six thousand dollars that he had from his brother made sixty thousand dollars.