True to the Game I

by Teri Woods

  “Gee,” he rasped, scaring her silly.

  “Quadir, I love you, baby. Please don’t die. You’re gonna be all right.”

  “It hurts, Gena. It’s burning!” Gena’s head spun about, looking for help, only to see Lita sprawled on the sidewalk in a pool of blood and Rik lying next to a car. She was all alone; there was no one left. They were all dead.

  “No! No! Qua, hold my hand please.” The bleeding was so bad, and she could feel his body tightening in her arms. Gena heard the sirens, but saw no ambulance.

  A police officer hunkered down next to her, speaking softly, “Miss, is he alive?”

  “Yes! Yes, but he needs an ambulance!”

  He touched her shoulder and told her, “There’s one on the way. It will be right here.” He stood and started counting bodies.

  “Take . . . take . . . ” Quadir whispered.

  “What, baby? What?”

  “Take it, take . . . ” He closed his eyes again and she began to remove his jewelry. “Key chain . . . take it.” He was able to slip the key chain to her, the diamond Q key chain she’d given him a week ago.

  “Qua, please hold on. The paramedics are on their way.” She stayed as close to him as possible without smothering him. Finally, the ambulance arrived and the paramedics gently helped her stand before placing Qua on the stretcher. She watched as they went to work on him, never letting go of his hand. The moist drops made their silent way down her cheek, unnoticed. “Quadir, I love you. Please don’t leave me. God, don’t take my baby from me.”

  Quadir looked up at her, squeezed her hand tight, and winked at her the same way he always did.

  “Qua, it’s gonna be okay,” Gena told him; her face awash with tears. “You’re gonna be all right, baby. Everything is gonna be fine.” She said looked down at his blood-drenched body. She knew the paramedics were still working, trying to save him, but she didn’t know that Qua was already on his way to everlasting peace, the journey that would take him to paradise, and that he had to leave Gena. He didn’t want to. He wanted to stay with her. She loved him and made him happy. She was the only woman who loved him: without the paper he knew she was with him. But he just . . . just couldn’t. He wanted to fight. He was fighting for every breath, but he was too tired. It looks nice there. His energy waned. But what about Gena? He wanted the pain to stop. He was hurting so bad. He looked up at his beautiful Gena one last time and knew they would be together one day. Then he closed his eyes and exhaled his last breath.

  Gena heard a funny sound, something she recognized, You only hear that on TV, don’t you? The beep of the heart monitor stopped like a never-ending pause, like an unending scream, and she was confused.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. Ma’am? He didn’t make it.”

  She sat there, holding his hand, looking into his beautiful face as the ambulance continued its route to the hospital. She held onto his hand but he wasn’t holding onto hers anymore. The vehicle stopped, and Gena heard someone speaking.

  “Ma’am? I’m sorry, ma’am. You’re gonna have to let us take him. Ma’am?”

  Someone was helping her take a step down, guiding her through a door. She was entering a building. She couldn’t feel the floor, but this looked like a place where you get help. Yes, help. Help for Quadir.

  Gena sat in a place they put her, and wondered, What is it I have to remember? Something happened, I think. Why am I on this table? Where is Quadir? She noticed a man in green scrubs, Oh, okay, a doctor. I’ll ask him. He’ll know what . . . what will he know? “Doctor,” she said, “Where is . . . where is Quadir Richards?”

  The doctor flagged down a staff member who escorted Gena to a gray hospital bed and pulled back the sheet. She moved closer. “Qua?” she said. “I’m here, honey. I’m right here. You know I wouldn’t leave you, didn’t you?” she said, her voice cracking. I bet if I kiss him. She leaned into him and kissed his lips. What her soul knew as fact would not make its way to her conscious mind.

  Qua’s body was cold where she kissed him. There was moisture tracking his still cheek that she slowly realized was falling from her own eyes. She felt a vacuum suck the strength from her midsection. She began to shake him as she kissed him, letting all her tears flow onto his ashen skin.

  “Oh, God! Please, Qua! Wake up! Don’t leave me! You said you would never leave me! What am I gonna do?” A big hole was opening up beneath her and she tried not to fall in. “Why, baby, why?” Her man, her only man, the only man who loved her in this cruel, angry, vicious world lay lifeless in a gray hospital bed.

  “You took care of me. You loved me so much. Don’t do it, Qua.” These words should bring him back. He should listen to me. And yet, he heard every word.

  “Qua, I can’t live without you. I don’t want to live without you. God, please take me, too. Please take me with him.” She started crying, loud, startling an orderly. People came in, looked, and then left. She was holding him, kissing him, trying to bring him back to life.

  “Miss,” someone said. “Miss, you have to leave.”

  ‘Who’s touching me?’ Her arms flew out. “Get your hands off of me!”

  “Miss, please. He’s gone. There was nothing we could do.”

  Gena shot him a look that could kill. “You motherfuckers can save every goddamn body else. Don’t touch me! Don’t fucking touch me!”

  She was reciting, over and over again, like a mantra, “Please don’t take him. Please don’t take him. Please don’t take him. God take me. Oh my Lord, why?”

  The orderly couldn’t deal with it and called the nurses’ station, glad that Quadir’s parents had arrived. He asked for their assistance. “Sir, his wife is distraught. It’s just a mess in there. She’s lying on top of him, she refuses to leave the room, I don’t know what to do.”

  “Let me talk to her.” The man’s heart broke seeing the lovely girl, desperately clinging to his son’s dead body. “Gena? Gena, I’m here.” She heard him, but said nothing. “Gena, baby, he’s gone. Come on. His mama wants to say good-bye. Come on.”

  The crooning sounds comforted her and she let herself be lifted from the cold shell that had been her lover, into Montell’s arms, and she let him surround her with consolation. “He’s all I had,” Gena told him. “All I had. He was my life. Without him, there’s no me. I can’t live without that man. I don’t want to.”

  “Yes, you can, Gena. You have to live. You have to be strong. Why you think my Quadir loved you so much? ’Cause you’re so strong. He loved you. Gena, you meant the world to that boy. It was just his time,” Montell added, as tears filled up his eyes and slowly melted down his cheeks.

  “No, no, no. It wasn’t.”

  “Yes, it was, baby girl. And you will pull through this.”

  “I can’t leave him here. They might not treat him right.”

  “They gonna do their job, Gena. Quadir is in good hands. Nothing can ever hurt him again. Do you know if he could look down and see you right now, and see how you’re acting, he’d be hurt to see you like this.”

  “Dad, please let me stay with him tonight. Please, I can’t leave him. I got to stay with him. He’s so cold. He needs a blanket. Can’t they get him a blanket?”

  “Gena, the boy don’t need no blanket. Girl, you scaring me. Now, you got to pull yourself together.”

  “Dad, why they take him from me?” she sobbed. “Why did God take my baby from me? Oh, God, why?” Montell tightened his hold on Gena so she wouldn’t fall to the floor. She leaned over on the bed and hugged Quadir’s lifeless body and kissed his cheek one last time. “I’ll always be with you,” she whispered in his ear. Then and only then did she let Quadir’s father lead her from the room.

  He passed his eyes one last time over his dead son and continued walking, holding the grieving woman, remembering that there was another waiting; Quadir’s mother.

  Montell took Gena home and stayed with her. When she awoke, Gah Git was sitting in a chair by the bed and Gucci was laying on Quadir’s pillow. “You
okay, baby?”

  “Where am I?” The scene was like Dorothy and Toto and it was all a bad dream.

  “You’re home. We brought you home last night.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m your grandmother, child. What, you done lost your rabid-ass mind?”

  Gena’s mind had to rewind itself. She wasn’t in the projects, she was at her house and that wasn’t Gah Git sitting there.

  “Who are you?” Gena asked the girl, not having a clue as to who this stranger was sitting before her.

  “I’m Nitah, Jalil’s second wife.” The girl spoke as if being someone’s second wife was some normal shit. Nitah was so peaceful, though, and so soft-spoken. She was humble even in her jewels and looked like a queen. She was fully garbed, with a beautiful kemar covering her head.

  “Where’s dad?” she asked.

  “He’s probably at the hospital, with the funeral director and members of the Masjid. They are making the funeral arrangements for Quadir.”

  “I got to go there,” Gena said, trying to get out of bed.

  “You can’t go. There is no one who can go there. Here, honey, just try to relax. I made some tea. Here, drink some. It’ll make you feel better.”

  There isn’t a goddamn thing that will make me feel better, thought Gena. She swallowed the prescribed sedative Nitah handed her, which happened to be the first of many.

  Nitah was a wise woman; only sleep could fix some things. She knew Gena was only nineteen and this kind of trauma could damage her if it wasn’t handled right. Poor thing, Nitah thought as she stroked Gena’s forehead. She stayed by Gena’s side until the funeral.

  It was the hardest day of Gena’s life. She hadn’t been outside or seen anyone other than Nitah since Qua had been killed. The funeral was packed. Rik called Gena from the hospital room he laid in. He cried for her and for Quadir, but most of all for Lita. Gena had never heard a man cry, not even Quadir. She didn’t know what to say; she didn’t know what to do. She felt his pain, and she began crying with him, especially when he talked of Lita. She died that night. She got shot in the neck and Rik never saw her go down or nothing. He wasn’t by her side and he never told her good-bye.

  Gena could not see the splendor that the funeral director had arranged for the people who loved Quadir Richards. She only knew her legs wouldn’t hold her up. She felt her belly sink some more and an aching pain twist at her insides as thoughts of him darted through her mind.

  “He looks so fine,” someone remarked.

  No, she thought. He looks dead.

  “The flowers are so beautiful,” someone else replied.

  The flowers smell like death, she thought. Someone was pulling at her, murmuring to her, “Gena, Gena, come on, baby. Sit down. You gonna hurt yourself. Please, come on.”

  She heard the person pulling at her tell people: “Please, please, she can’t handle it. Never mind the condolences, she can’t hear you.” All Gena could hear was someone crying. So loud, and it hurt so bad. Her body could no longer hold her up, and she dropped in front of his casket to the floor.

  Something’s holding me. I can’t feel nothin’, but I’m standin’. How’d they do that? Then she forgot a lot for a time, and then she was outside, still standing, but not alone. It was pretty outside. We in the park. Look, there’s birds. What’s that noise?

  The whirring sound of the casket being lowered into the ground registered and brought Gena out of her mental closet for a moment. Into that black hole went all of Gena’s hopes, her babies, her life, her one true love. The only man who really loved her. And as his casket sunk deeper and deeper into the ground, her body sank into her grandmother’s arms. Gah Git knew her baby would never be the same.

  The weeks passed, and Gena never once went outside. The day Rik was released from the hospital, he went to see her and stayed in the guestroom. Together, they took care of each other and listened to one another’s stories about the good old days. Rik knew Gena was not the same. He wished she would come out her darkness. He tried everything from jokes to reminiscing about his own memories with Quadir, but nothing seemed to work.

  And then, someone knocked at the back door. “You expecting somebody, Gena?”

  “No.”

  Rik opened the back door to find Quadir’s mother standing in the freezing cold.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” said Denise.

  “How you feeling, Gena?” asked Viola, walking through the house into the living room no one was allowed in.

  “I’m feeling better,” said Gena. “Can I get you something?”

  “I’m not on a social call.”

  “Oh. Well, um, what’s up?” asked Gena, wondering what the fuck she was there for.

  Viola didn’t beat around the bush with idle talk about the weather. She got right to the point and she broke that shit down without blinking an eye.

  “Listen, Quadir was my son, and I loved him dearly. However, he is gone now, and life must go on.” She reached in her pocket-book and pulled out a sheaf of paperwork, which she shoved in Gena’s face. “As you can see, this house is in my name. I own this house, dear, and I have plans for this property.”

  Gena couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Not just the deed to the house, she had paperwork on the Range Rover and the BMW. “Everything,” said Viola Richards, “Not Montell. Not Montell and Viola, just Viola.” The only thing that wasn’t in the bitch’s name was Gena’s furniture, the jewelry, and the Benz. That was it. Gena just sat there looking at the bitch.

  Rik stepped in. “I think you should leave, now. I really think it’s time for you to go.”

  “Well, I will give you a week. I hope you understand.” She stood up and shook it off as if she had said nothing out of the ordinary. “This has all been so difficult for me to deal with.”

  No one had noticed Gena coming alive. “Difficult for you? It hasn’t been that difficult for you to sink your claws into all of Quadir’s shit!”

  “These assets are in my name. Therefore, that makes them mine.”

  “And what exactly, now that Qua is dead, is yours?”

  “The house, the furnishings, the cars, and the jewelry. I want it all back.”

  “Oh, no, bitch. That’s where you fucked up. The Mercedes-Benz is in my name. Would you like to see my paperwork? And the furnishings I bought.” By now she was towering over the woman. “Would you like to see my receipts? And the jewelry is mine, too. Everything in this house is mine. All you’re gonna get is the walls!” The teen-aged widow stood there waiting, wondering why grownups could be so mean.

  Denise came to her mother’s aid. “Who you think you talking to?”

  Gena slipped into superior gear. “Whom . . . do you think? Let me tell you something. When your son came into this house and needed something, the motherfucker came to me. When he had a problem, he told it to me. I am the one who gave Quadir what he needed. Anything he needed, he came to me!” She was into it now; her eyes were boring into the cold-hearted woman and her violin string, tight-ass, chicken hawk daughter.

  “That man, my man, has only been in the ground two weeks and you’re already here to claim his shit.”

  “My brother would have wanted us to have his things, that’s why he put it in our mom’s name.”

  “Bitch, please. He put it in your mother’s name, Denise, because he was a drug dealer. Shit don’t mean he wanted her to have a motherfucking thing. Did the motherfucker ever invite you over? Hell no. What’s this, your third visit? I know it, and you know it, and you know who your son bought this house for. He bought it for me. You remember that when you turn the key and unlock the door, you miserable bitch. And you never liked me, so I’m not surprised you got the fucking audacity to come in my house and tell me some bullshit like this.”

  “Who you calling a bitch?” asked Denise.

  “You heard me. I didn’t stutter. Your mother is a miserable bitch that goes around trying to make everyone else miserable. Shit, she can’t ev
en hold her man. You want me out? Fuck you, both ya’ll can kiss my ass. I hope you burn in hell!”

  Rik was up. He’d been letting Gena get everything off her chest, proud as a peacock and just as happy to see her again among the living, but enough was enough. “I think you two should go. You really have no place here. Neither of you do, and what you’re doing is wrong. Qua wouldn’t have wanted nothing like this. He wouldn’t have wanted this to go on.” He stood his ground against the chicken hawks.

  “They don’t care about Quadir. How could they? How could she? That bitch didn’t even raise him, Rik. His grandmother did, and his sister never knew him. Come in here telling me about my goddamn man. Motherfuck you and this motherfucking house!”

  “You curse all you want. You can say whatever you want, you just get your low-life ass out my house.”

  “Fuck you, bitch,” said Gena, as she spit at Viola missing her by a blow of the wind as Viola opened the door.

  “Hey, Gena, don’t let me see you in the street, bitch, ’cause your ass is mines,” said Denise.

  “Bitch, we can go round for round right here and right now. Let me go, Rik,” said Gena, ready to fuck both they asses up. Gee was hyped. She was ready to be world champion.

  “Gena, chill the fuck out!” Rik yelled. He ushered the chicken hawks out the door and closed it behind them. They must have caught a cab to the house or had someone drop them off ’cause they damn sure were taking the Rover and the BMW with them. Gena wanted to stop them, but what the fuck for? She wanted to kill the bitches, but it wasn’t worth it.

  “The bitch can have it, Rik. She can have it all. Shit, the insurance is up on the BMW. I should blow it up.” Looking around, she felt her belly sinking again. But only for a second. “What am I gonna do, Rik?”

  “Call a storage company, pay them to come and pack your shit up and store it for you. Then you’re gonna figure out where you’re gonna stay and you’re gonna move. If you want a house, I’ll get you one, or you can come and stay with me.”

  “No, Rik. I’m okay.” She finally sat down. “I want to go home.” For the first time in her life, she wanted to go home to Gah Git’s house.