by Cash
“Hadiya is about to catch a case!” Ava whispered.
“Bruh just clowning.” I defended my dude, but it did seem disrespectful. “As far as I know, Criminal keeps it funky with shawdy,” I told Ava.
“I hope he’s not starting to get the big head,” Ava stated. I was wondering the same thing, but I didn’t speak on it.
My eyes searched for Hadiya and found her with a scowl on her face like stone.
I left Ava and pulled up on Hadiya. “What’s up, shawdy? Look, it’s all fun. You know where Criminal’s heart is,” I said.
She took a minute to weigh my words, and then she replied, “You’re right.” I saw the anger disappear from her face.
When I got back to Ava, some drunk ass nigga was all over her. He wasn’t simply all up in her face, he was all touchy feely and shit. I saw that she was trying to push dude away, but dude wouldn’t fall back. Being the “G” that I am, I stepped up in his shit aggressive as a mofo. “Dude, what the fuck is your problem?” I shoved him hard. The nigga took a wild swing at me and caught me in the eye. As I staggered back, I saw the GF chain dangling around his neck.
Within seconds, I was surrounded by a mob of GF niggas. “Yo, everybody chill the fuck out!” Criminal’s command saved some lives, because I was reaching for my banger.
“’Sup, fam’?” he asked me.
“I’m gucci. Happy Birthday, my nigga. I’m out.” I grabbed Ava’s hand and we headed for the exit, steam rising off my head.
Criminal caught up with us in the parking lot. Somebody must’ve explained what went down because he had ol’ boy with him. “Apologize to my peep,” he ordered.
The dude uttered a drunken apology to us.
“You good with that, fam’?” Criminal asked me.
“I’ma holla later,” I said. I didn’t need another man to straighten my business. I took Ava home, changed into all black, and headed back to the club in a different whip.
I followed dude that disrespected us to some apartments on Cascade Road. How that drunk nigga made it home without wrecking his whip is unbelievable. They say God watches over old folks, babies, and fools. I guess dude wasn’t either of the three, because his luck vanished the moment he stepped out of his car and staggered up the walkway to the building. I took aim with the yoppa and opened up his back. “Black and yellow, black and yellow.”
The next day, my phone was vibrating off the dresser with back to back calls from Criminal. I sent him to voice mail a time or two, until it became obvious that he wasn’t gonna give up. “Fam’, I asked you last night if my people’s apology was good enough,” he roared when I answered.
“And I didn’t answer, did I?” The line went quiet.
After about thirty seconds, he said, “So you just get at my people without clearing it with me first, huh?”
I kind of laughed. “Would you have told me it was okay to smash your comrade?”
“Hell no! The nigga was drunk when he did that stupid shit last night.”
“It’s all good now. Maybe in his next life he’ll know better,” I replied.
“It’s like that? Dayum fam’, I thought we were better than that.”
“That wasn’t about you, bruh. But I understand if you feel obligated to ride for one of yours. I’m not saying I want beef with you, ‘cause it’s not like that. You know I got mad respect and love for you, and I know you do real nigga shit. To be a young general, you the best that ever done it—I tip my hat to you. But at the same time, I’m not no peon. Ya’ man violated the wrong nigga and he paid for it.”
We debated back and forth until the verbal altercation became intense. “Yo, this ain’t what you want,” said Criminal.
“Fam’, I’m not about to pack up and move,” I declared.
The phone went dead. My battery wasn’t low and the call hadn’t dropped, so I understood what that meant.
Ava was wide-awake at this point. “Trouble, can I say something without making you feel that I’m taking Criminal’s side against you?”
“Ain’t nothing to say.”
“Now you’re letting your arrogance take over. I’m calling Inez,” she said in frustration.
“Shawdy, you can call President Obama if you want to; it ain’t gonna change shit,” I huffed.
A lesser nigga than myself might’ve been shook with all the beefs coming my way, but not the eldest son of Youngblood. It didn’t matter to me how long or formidable my list of adversaries became. The way I saw it we all were living on borrowed time. Criminal was my nigga, but if he chose to take it there, I would leave blood on every GF medallion in the ‘A.’
CHAPTER 35
I continued to move around the city without fear. Taxes still had to be collected and mouths still had to be fed. I ran up in a d-boy’s spot and touched him for fifteen bricks and thirty bands. I did him dirty, but not filthy, leaving twenty bands in his safe for his family to bury him with. I was stacking so many bodies and creating so many enemies, paranoia began to set in. Every single noise I heard brought my banger out. Every car that pulled up close to mine almost got sprayed with my yoppa. Ava sensed that I was a ticking time bomb. To ease the rumbling volcano threatening to erupt from within me, she hurriedly arranged a week’s vacation in the Bahamas. I sensed she was up to some slick shit, too, by the way she was acting. She was whispering to someone on the phone and pressing me very hard to take the vacation. “What you up to, shawdy?” I questioned her.
She feigned innocence.
I guessed that whatever it was, Inez was in on it, but I never would’ve expected the surprise that awaited me when we arrived at the resort in the Bahamas. Vacationing on the same resort were Criminal and Hadiya.
Hadiya had duped her man, too; I saw the surprise on his face when we encountered each other at the pool. Neither of us spoke, but our shawdies conniving asses greeted each other with a warm hug. I frowned at Ava and went back to the bungalow and began packing. Ava blocked the doorway, to prevent me from leaving out. “Move shawdy. I’m not bullshittin’!” I said.
“Hmph, and neither am I! Yo ass is staying!” she shot back. Her arms were folded across her chest in defiance. “The only way you’re leaving is to go through me!”
I grilled her for a second or two, and then I dropped my luggage on the floor and sat down on the bed. To relax my mind I fired up one of the blunts Ava had smuggled on the plane inside a balloon that was tucked inside of her kitty. I ignored her as she left out of the bungalow.
A few minutes later, she returned with Hadiya and Criminal. The look on his face told me that his girl either dragged him to our bungalow or threatened to put a padlock on the goodies if he refused to come.
“Hi Trouble,” Hadiya spoke with that sister-girl attitude. Shawdy was fine as hell, and just like my shawdy, her attitude was not to be fucked with. She stood with one hand on her hip and flung the other around as she spoke. I found it amusing.
“Me and Ava are going to leave you and this stubborn man of mines to talk like men. Whatever you all’s disagreement is, it can be worked out. Come on, Ava, let’s go back to the pool.” Hadiya eyeballed Criminal, and then walked out of the bungalow.
Ava bent in for a kiss. I turned my head and it landed on my cheek. “Swallow a little bit of your pride, baby. Do it for me,” she whispered in my ear then exited behind Criminal’s woman.
I hit the blunt again, and then offered it to bruh. He accepted it. “So where do we go from here, fam’?” I spoke first, attempting to feel him out. He sat on the silk covered chair, across from where I sat. Criminal crossed his leg over the other and made a steeple under his chin with his hands. A young Don, I thought to myself.
“Before I answer that, let me tell you something about the nigga you killed. He put in a lot of work for the team when we beefed with the esés. Fam’ really couldn’t hold his liquor, but when sober, he was a good nigga. My dudes wanna ride for their brother, but I won’t let them. And I haven’t told any of them that you killed him, but they suspect
it.”
“I ain’t never scared,” I retorted.
“Don’t you think I know that? Nigga, we’re cut from the same cloth. But bruh, you was wrong. Dead ass.” I saw a tear trickle down his face.
Yep, gangstas do cry, I was reminded.
The raw hurt that he displayed did not lessen my respect for him. The tears were for the frustration it caused him to let the murder of one of his comrades go unpunished.
“Man, you put me in a fucked up position. But my word is law with my team, and I already told them they can’t come after you. I’ma just charge that one to my heart,” he stated, letting out a sigh.
“I’ma tell you something that only a few people know. I get my work from your people now.”
“My people? Who you talkin’ about?” I asked, confused and wondering what it had to do with anything.
“Swag. That’s who supplies me now. I know that you’re like a son to him, so that’s another reason, besides the hood respect I have for you, that I don’t want no drama.”
I smirked. “You lying! Damn, I didn’t know Swag still fucked with the streets.”
“You still don’t know it,” said Criminal. He didn’t have to spell it out; my lips were sealed.
Understanding that we had another bond, we made peace between us with a gangsta hug.
With the discord between Criminal and I squashed, we both were looking forward to enjoying the Islands with our girls and with each other. But the lives that he and I lived seemed not to allow a moment of peace.
Lounging in my hotel suite, smoking sticks of loud while Ava and Hadiya went shopping, spending bands of our blood money, I listened to Criminal tell me about his ongoing war with the esés. “I thought they had folded their hands,” I cut in.
“Nawl bruh, those muthafuckas are like roaches—you kill ten and there’s a hundred more. Madda fact, I don’t feel right lamping in the Bahamas while shit is still going down back in the ‘A’.
“Understood.”
“Hold up, bruh, let me hit my niggas up and make sure everything is gucci.” He had been calling back checking on his crew a dozen times a day for the past two days.
“Mob shit,” he said, greeting whoever answered on the other end. He held the phone to his ear and listened for about ten minutes and didn’t utter another word until he said, “I’m on my way back. Y’all stand down unitl I get there. One.”
All of a sudden Criminal hurled the cell phone against the wall. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” he howled. Pain like no other was etched on his face.
“What happened, bruh?”
“Some wetbacks snatched up Doom, Shyne, and Shyne’s baby mama!”
I knew what that meant because esés didn’t snatch muthafuckas up to talk. But I had to ask anyway. “Did they kill them?”
Criminal’s head dropped. “Yeah, bruh, and they tortured them,” he said in a voice that cracked.
“You know I’m on deck if you need me.”
Criminal was too distraught to reply. I knew what he was feeling. The game of money and murder was a cold ass bitch when it was time to bury one of yours.
The flight back home was somber and quiet.
CHAPTER 36
Back in the ‘A’ it was the middle of spring and the temperatures was already hot. And so were the streets. Criminal buried his fallen soldiers and then he made somebody rich . . . whoever got paid to ship dead Mexicans back home for burial. Mob shit had the city turned up.
The streets said that the Feds had been called in, so that quieted down everybody’s guns for a minute.
With things quieted, I spent the next few weeks kickin’ it with Inez, Ava, and my sisters. Inez’s oldest daughter, Bianca still hadn’t returned home, but she was no longer out there headed for destruction. Now Bianca was back living with Inez’s mother who had primarily raised her anyway.
That same week Inez and I took my sisters to see Grandma Ann at the mental facility. As soon as the nursing assistants brought her out to the picnic area where we were seated, it was apparent that she was getting better. Her eyes looked clearer than they had been in a long time, and her face wasn’t as swollen from the medication as it had been at the previous facility. “Ms. Ann, your grandson and some other family members are here to see you. Here, let me help you sit down,” said the plump woman who’d brought her out.
“Chile, I can sit down on my own,” insisted Grandma.
The nurse continued helping Grandma Ann until she was properly seated. Then she smiled and left us alone. “Hi Grandma, look who I brought to see you,” I said. Inez, Tamia, Chanté, and Eryka were standing on each side of me.
She looked curiously, as if searching her memory for recognition. She must have drawn a blank because her brows furrowed. “I’m Lil T, Grandma. Uh . . . Youngblood’s son,” I said, trying to jog her memory.
“And these are his daughters, Tamia, Chanté, and Eryka. And this is Tamia’s mother, Inez, who was your son’s girlfriend.”
“His girlfriend? Shan? Get her away from me!” she suddenly cried out and moaned with a pain that seemed to come from way deep down in her soul. I reached for her hand and held it in mine.
“No Grandma, that’s not Shan. That’s Inez, she really loved my father,” I said.
She stared at Inez while mouthing her name several times. Something clicked, because she smiled and said to Inez, “Hi, Sweetie. Where have you been? Why isn’t my son with you? Is he still upset with me?” She was better, but still not well.
“No, he is not,” replied Inez, fighting back tears.
“Well, you tell him to come sit with his mother for awhile. You hear me?”
“Yes ma’am.” Now Inez had tears streaming down her face. I could tell she tried to keep them from falling, yet they managed to slip out.
“Chile, stop that crying. And who are these pretty girls?”
I reintroduced my sisters one by one. “Oh my! Terrence certainly has been a busy boy,” she remarked.
Everybody cracked up.
“Where is Toi? Why didn’t she come?” asked Grandma.
Nobody said a word.
“I want my Toi and I want Terrance. Bring my babies to me. Bring my babies to me! Bring my babies to me!” she cried.
I wrapped my arms around her and held her while she cried against my chest. I looked up and there wasn’t a dry eye in our gathering, including my own.
CHAPTER 37
It took a week, a quarter pound of Kush, and a half dozen boxes of Swisher Sweets to get my head back right after the heart-wrenching visit with Grandma Ann. I could see that she was progressing some at the new facility, but it wasn’t enough. I resigned myself to get her the best psychological care in the country, if I had to jack every hustla in Fulton County to pay for it.
I pulled on my fitted and checked my profile in the mirror. “Shawdy, hand me the Visine,” I said to Ava. “Jay-Z wasn’t lying when he said that stress will give a young nigga an old face.”
“Boy, you don’t look old at all.” She assuaged my ego. She applied the eye drops to my eyes and punctuated her tenderness with a kiss, leaving a trace of strawberry lip-gloss on my lips. I licked it off and squeezed her booty. “Don’t start nothing you don’t want to finish,” she moaned sexily.
Shawdy was always tryna seduce a nigga when I was trying to roll out. The sultriness of her tone told me that she wasn’t kidding. I promised to give her a tune up when we returned from the park.
The whole hood attended a function at Grant Park to raise money to build an after school youth center. I held my shawdy’s hand as we went from booth to booth checking out what they were selling. As usual, I was strapped but I still felt uncomfortable amongst a large crowd of people, any of whom could be the enemy.
I ran into mad niggas who paid me taxes; I wasn’t stressing them. Had they wanted to get at me, why choose a public place where there were hundreds of witnesses and dozens of po-po’s? Criminal and them came through stuntin’ hard in Coogi gear and dumb jewels. Hadiya was not o
n his arm; she seldom rolled with him when his swag was on public display. He noticed Ava and me and came over to holla. His entire crew followed.
We hollered briefly and then pushed on. I caught the lingering hard stares of two or three of his comrades as they walked away. The look I returned should’ve let them know that they could get served too. At a barbeque stand, I ran into a lady who looked at me curiously and asked, “What’s your daddy’s name?”
“Youngblood. Why?”
“Wow! You look like he spit you out his mouth! Don’t he, girl?” she asked the woman with her.
“He sure do. Your daddy was the livest muthafucka I ever met.”
“Humph. And he had some good dick too! I only got it once, but I remember it like it was yesterday. Woo, that nigga tore this cootie mama up!”
I spit out the soda I was drinking.
“Fiona, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” exclaimed her friend.
Fiona? I tried to recall the name from my pop’s book, but I drew a blank. My nigga had good taste, though. She was a fly broad and thick as hell too. She reminded me of Lisa Raye in the face, and when she walked away I could see that she damn sure had a body like her. After they left, Ava and I made our way through a throng of teenagers to the front of the stage that had been set up. Local amateur rappers were entertaining the spectators. A few of the niggas were nice, but a chick named LaLa ate ‘em up.
As the sun dimmed, a buzz floated through the crowd. Then a slow procession of SUV limos made a path through the sea of bodies all the way up to the stage. Screams filled the air when Swag and his entourage stepped out of the vehicles and climbed up on the stage.
He grabbed the mic and announced, “Anybody seen TI? When you do see Tip, tell him that I’m the muthafuckin’ new king of the South!” The spotlight that shined on Swag slowly moved to one of the tinted SUVs. The doors swung open and four big niggas stepped out.
