The System Has Failed

by Ms. Michel Moore

  “‘All eyes on me,’” Yankee sang along with the old-school throwback Tupac song as he got to the light, which had just turned red.

  Sitting at the light, caught up in his thoughts of how his new life was gonna be as soon as he touched back down in Brooklyn, Yankee once again didn’t notice the Hummer, which had now crept up alongside him. Suddenly a horn blew. Yankee looked over, nodding at the passenger and wondering what in the fuck these immigrant motherfuckers from south of the border wanted. The driver of the Hummer blew once more, signaling for Yankee to lower his window. Glancing down at his gun, which was lying on the middle console, he turned down the sounds and cracked the window.

  “Yeah, what up doe? What y’all need?” Yankee snarled with each word that passed his lips. “What it do?”

  “Hey, homeboy, nice ride. Real nice ride,” the man said. “Is this you?”

  “Yeah, dawg.” Yankee twisted his lip as he placed his hand on the steering wheel so the occupants in the Hummer could admire his ill-gotten ring. “This all me!”

  “Oh, yeah?” the passenger questioned Yankee’s response with a strange expression. “You don’t know Kenneth?”

  “Naw, I don’t know no damn Kenneth. You got me mixed up, playa.” Yankee hit the button to roll the window back up, and he sped off, getting a feeling something was wrong. They asses probably some carjackers and shit trying to catch a brother slipping, but a nigga like me ain’t falling for that bullshit! Yankee glanced back in his rearview mirror as the Hummer continued to follow. Not to-fucking-day!

  Running every other red light, Yankee floored the BMW, pushing it as fast as he could go and trying to shake the dudes in the Hummer. With Tupac still blaring from the custom sound system’s speakers, he made two sharp lefts, a couple of rights, and unwisely another fast set of left turns before realizing he was completely lost in the heavily Hispanic Southwest Detroit neighborhood. Finding himself on a dead-end block, Yankee, whose one arm was now useless, threw the gear into reverse, trying to maneuver the high-powered, expensive vehicle off the block and to Fort Street, which he could see across the dense section of trees.

  Blocking the pathway of the dark street, the truck in pursuit stood guard as Yankee came to the conclusion he was trapped. With the combination of the liquor, weed, and Tylenol, Yankee was feeling like he was Superman or some other old make-believe superhero bullshit like that. Taking his gun off the console and holding it tightly, he stepped out of the BMW, ready for whatever.

  If they want this motherfucker, they gonna have to kill my black ass first! Yankee was prepared to fight for the car tooth and nail as if he’d spent six long, grueling months working overtime at one of Detroit’s Big Three to scrape together the down payment to cop that son of a bitch.

  Slowly the Hummer’s passenger door opened, and a tall Spanish man exited the oversized vehicle. He fearlessly walked up to Yankee, who was half drunk and high out of his mind. Curious, poverty-stricken neighbors who’d come out of their homes after hearing the loud, disturbing sounds blasting from the shiny BMW turned away now, retreating inside after recognizing the man whose father owned most of the mortgages and deeds to their properties. Without fear of Yankee, he called out to him from about eight or so yards away.

  “Hey, pequeño pedazo de mierda,” Juan Averez shouted to the guy he knew was driving his homeboy Stuff’s new ride. “Usted tiene una boca inteligente!”

  Not being able to speak Spanish, Yankee was at a total loss for what was being yelled out to him in the middle of the now-deserted street, but he could tell from the grim expression on the man’s stern face as he approached him that it wasn’t shit at all nice. “Look yo, I don’t know what your problem is with me, but you might wanna go fuck with the next guy ’cause I ain’t trying to hear that shit right about now!” Yankee raised his gun, showing Juan he was strapped and would most definitely shoot if he had to. “I ain’t in the mood! I done had a long fucking day!”

  “Okay, smart-mouth little black cotton-picking nigga! You sure you don’t know Kenneth?” Juan spoke plain English. “Is that what you telling me?”

  “Listen up, you fucked-up-speaking, rice-and-nasty-bean-eating motherfucker, I already done told you hell fucking naw!” Yankee spit through his teeth. “I don’t know no Kenneth!”

  “Damn, then that’s real foul, you rotten piece of cow shit, because you about to get killed on the humble for driving a dead man’s car!”

  “What?” Yankee saw his short life on earth flash before his eyes as he went for his. “Go fuck yourself!”

  Juan raised an Israeli-style Uzi he had concealed under his shirt, took aim, and let loose. “My sister’s boyfriend, Stuff, said he owes you this! See you in hell!”

  In a thunderous hail of one-sided bright gunfire sparks, Yankee’s medium-built torso took in bullet after bullet as his body appeared to be dancing in the street until he finally dropped to the ground in defeat. Busting his head on the hard concrete then letting loose his gun, Yankee gave up, taking his last breath of the Detroit industrial-polluted air. The now-deceased Yankee, who always pestered, plotted, and schemed, wanting to meet Stuff and Terrell’s connect so badly, had finally gotten his wish.

  Juan had received the disturbing call about Stuff’s untimely callous murder from his hysterical sister Marie. He thanked God for putting him in the right place at the right time, lucking out and seeing Yankee at the store he and his homeboys hung out at on the regular. After hearing Yankee’s smart-mouth comments, it was more than a pleasure to let him have it.

  As Juan drove off in Stuff’s BMW to return it to his parents, who were both back at the house in mourning, Yankee lay dead in the litter-filled street, not to be discovered until daybreak by a couple of inebriated bums who searched his pockets first before calling the police, who of course took hours to respond.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Okay, what happened to Stuff?” Once again, Terrell was back at his mother’s throat, picking up where he’d left off before the interruption at the door. “I’m about to call him.”

  “Hold up.” Simone pushed the cordless phone to the other side of the table. “Didn’t Drake tell you he was on his way? And besides all that, you acting like you ain’t hear shit I said about Elon!”

  “Fuck what you talking about, Ma! I already done told you that if that faggot don’t come see me soon, it really don’t matter, ’cause I’m gonna go look for him.” Terrell reached down, trying his best to keep his trembling legs to stop moving around from side to side. “Shit, I’m a grown-ass man. Despite what you think, I ain’t no punk.”

  She cringed and shook her head at her son and the way he was in total denial about the severity of what was going down. Simone took a deep breath at the thought of what he’d gotten them both involved in because he wanted to prove a point. Damn him for being Kamal’s son. “I should’ve just let you stay out there with Prayer when she called me begging my black ass to tell you that you wasn’t welcome here,” Simone fumed as she lit a Newport to calm her nerves. “But naw, instead I wanted for once to have the upper hand on her uppity, goody-two-shoes self!”

  Li’l T couldn’t believe his ears or what was coming from his mother’s mouth. Rolling around to the other side of the gun-filled table and closer to Simone, Terrell felt his resentment level for both Prayer and her rise for using him once again as a human pawn in their silly and petty, jealous-inspired game. “Huh?” Terrell’s mouth grew increasingly dry as he tried to speak. “What you talking about now?”

  Seeing it as a way to get her son further away from Prayer and her overbearing, holier-than-thou influence, Simone vindictively decided she had nothing else to lose and went on to spill the beans about everything. Okay, he wanna hear the real deal, then fuck it!

  That she really couldn’t stand Joi, the reason being that her mother, Clip-N-Dip Moe, was known as the local setup queen and had gotten a lot of drug dealers, including Big Ace, damn near killed back in the day, didn’t really come as a major surprise to the p
issed-off Terrell. Then, finding out from his now-so-informative, whorish mother that throughout the years, on and off, she’d been sleeping with Drake in exchange for money and other gifts, despite his seemingly loyal and devoted marriage to Prayer, wasn’t much in the way of a shock. Li’l T knew Drake was a man and was gonna get the pussy from any grimy bitch who opened her legs if he could, even if it was his wife’s former best friend. And still, when Simone cruelly confessed the unthinkable, informing Terrell that she’d conspired with Prayer to keep a drunk, elderly Willy Dale, who was now confined to a nursing home and who was Kamal’s biological father, making him Li’l T’s grandfather, away from him so he wouldn’t discover jack shit about that side of his family including an aunt who lived just outside of the Gates, he remained silent.

  “You had enough of confession time now or what?” Simone lit yet another Newport, showing no shame for what she’d done and how she treated him throughout his childhood. “If not, I can keep it going!”

  “Don’t let me stop you,” Terrell screamed out with the look of murder in his eyes as Joi emerged out his bedroom, alarming Simone, who up until this point was unaware that she was even in there. “You on a fucking roll and shit!”

  “What in the hell she doing here?” Simone raged as a bruised and confused Joi wiped the sleep out of her swollen and puffy eyes. “She giving you and Big Ace’s son the pussy and you got her all up in the crib! Is you crazy? I told you I saw this tramp with Elon last week, with your dumb ass!”

  “Ma, damn all that.” Li’l T rolled his chair toward Joi, who was now in tears with a runny nose after overhearing the awful things her boyfriend’s mother was saying about Monique. “You was in the middle of ‘Confessions of a Fucked-up Mother,’ so keep going! Tell me how much other bullshit you done did to make my life miserable!”

  Simone, having enough of her son’s smart, disrespectful mouth, especially in front of a petty female who she didn’t feel was fit to polish her shoes after stepping in a pile of dog shit, was set to really let him have it hardcore. With the final confession, which hit below the belt, on the tip of her tongue, a crashing sound from the rear of the house caused Simone, Terrell, and Joi to became panicked and instinctively take some sort of cover. Diving out of his wheelchair onto the carpet, Li’l T yelled for Joi to get out of harm’s way and back into his room.

  In the middle of all the chaos and confusion that was going on, spontaneously Simone grew instantly irritated that her son, her child, her first and only born, the little wide-headed baby who came crying out of her womb and stretched the motherfucker to twice its natural size hadn’t even once screamed out to make sure she was safe.

  Dig this ungrateful, crippled bastard seed of mine! Ain’t this some bull! Drake is right! This one over there done forgot who feeds his sorry ass! He done let the hot summer sun and that bitch’s pussy fuck him all up! That little ho Joi, who is acting all innocent and helpless, gotsta go! Simone, terrified herself, crouched down near the side of the china cabinet and watched as she heard another booming sound of wood and metal cracking. When the kitchen door flew off the hinges and landed on the marble floor, Simone had second thoughts about running her mouth so much, not doing what she was told by her sometimes fuck buddy, Prayer’s husband.

  Oh, Shit! Oh, Shit! Damn! Shit! She glanced up at the cordless phone still on the table and unfortunately out of reach as she held on tightly to the handle of her gun. Why didn’t I just call the freaking police when Drake told me to? Now that fool done kept his word and is in my damn house! But I swear on every single dick I done sucked and every ass I done kissed to get a bill paid, I’m gonna blast that boy if he bend this corner! Big Ace can just bury two sons instead of one!

  Terrell felt his legs still twitching as soon as he hit the carpet after hearing the sounds come from the rear of the house. Between all the yelling and arguing he and Simone were preoccupied doing, he’d let his guard down and had gotten caught slipping. Now, if what his mother claimed was true, Big Ace’s son, who was the same coward who had raped his girl, was now inside his house and ready to do battle.

  “Joi, hurry up! Go back in my room and get out of the fucking way,” Terrell demanded as he gripped both pistols and took aim at the direction the noises were coming from. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” he shouted as the young girl, nervous and still in tears, didn’t know which way to run. “Hurry up! Go!”

  Seeing that his satanic-minded mother, who had given birth to him under duress, was hidden behind the china cabinet with a gun in her own hand for protection, Li’l T automatically knew she wasn’t gonna go out like a bitch and just let Elon come in and run buck wild in the crib. His ol’ girl wasn’t cut like that, and all of Detroit knew it.

  Good, she’s over there near the other side of the room strapped up. And if I know my mama like I do, she’ll nail Jesus back to the cross if it means her ornery ass will live to see another day. Terrell was confident. If the dude who was going around claiming I GO HARD wanted to make this their final night of reckoning, then so be it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Elon didn’t care if anyone saw him brandishing his weapon as he got out of his truck. His palms sweated with each step he took toward Terrell’s house and the revenge he had planned. Still suffering from shock and denial about Donte and his critical condition, he paused as his cell phone rang. Seeing an unknown number flash on the screen, Elon shot the call straight to voicemail as he pulled up his sagging jeans and continued his small hike up the block.

  “Excuse me, young man. Excuse me.” An elderly woman, the Gates’s own self-appointed busy body, poked her head out her front door after realizing she’d never before seen the teenager or his truck in their usually calm, tranquil neighborhood. “Can I help you? Are you lost?”

  “What? Hell naw, I ain’t lost.” Elon sharply turned to face her eye to eye, raising his pistol from his side. Pointing it in the lady’s direction, with his armpits showing heavy signs of perspiration, he dared her to say another single word. Then he gave her a direct order. “Now take ya old ass back into the house and shut the fucking door, or you gonna have a major problem on ya hands!”

  With her old heart racing a hundred miles per hour, not waiting a moment more to see which way the outspoken thug was headed, immediately she did as she was told and slammed the door. After turning the lock, the woman then stumbled to her kitchen and grabbed the phone on the wall.

  Picking up his pace, knowing full well the old lady was gonna call the police to the upscale neighborhood he was about to terrorize, Elon concentrated on his game plan. I’m about to give that drag-along-leg nigga the true business! He approached Terrell’s van parked on the side of the house. Listening at the window to the array of voices, Elon once again paused as the strange number reappeared on his cell. Who the fuck is calling me now?

  “Yeah, speak on it,” he whispered so as not to be heard as he kept low and out of sight.

  “Hey, baby, it’s me,” Auntie Eunice replied with a tone of sorrow. “Wherever you’re at, you need to get back down here to the hospital.”

  “I will, Auntie, as soon as I take care of something first.” Elon glanced over his shoulder, still hearing the voices inside the house get louder and turn into some sort of a shouting match as he made his way around the back. “Then I’ll be on my way.”

  “Look, Elon,” she said, keeping it real as she always had with her troublesome nephew, “your father told me to get in touch with you and tell you to get back down here ASAP because the doctors don’t think your brother is gonna make it. Matter of fact, they’ve given up any hope.”

  “Naw! Naw! Naw!” Furious at the news he’d just heard from his auntie, Elon knocked over two steel garbage cans, smashing them against the house’s frame. Then, in another act of rage mixed with grief, knowing his brother and best friend was barely clinging to life and about to die, Elon lifted his foot several times, kicking in Simone’s back kitchen door and knocking it completely off its hinges.

 
“Show your face, motherfucker!” Elon demanded as if it were his house and not Simone’s he was invading. “It’s time to dance, you crippled bitch! So man up! Where you at?”

  “All you gotta do is bring that punk ass out of the kitchen and out here in the open, and you can best believe the dance is definitely on and popping.” Terrell lay spread-eagle on the floor by the couch, taking aim at the doorway separating him from Elon as he mocked him. “You done came this far, homeboy, so a few more damn steps ain’t gonna kill you, coward. Or is that what you scared of?”

  “Right! Come on now, dude, don’t play yourself!” Elon quickly returned insults to his enemy. “You can ask your girl was I scared when I was pounding that bitch’s pussy raw dog from the back!” he callously ridiculed with the blow-by-blow account of his tortured-filled evening with Joi. “Yeah, you can trust that fat, tender cat was tight as hell when I first stuffed this eight inches up in it, but after a few minutes, ump ump ump, I stretched that son of a bitch out just right for a brother.” Elon continued shattering Terrell’s world as he lay on the floor forced to listen. “And ooh-wee! I ain’t gonna talk about the excellent head Joi got on her! Deep throat, swallow, the whole nine! She took it like a champ!”

  He revealed even more as he scanned the room for any sight of Li’l T. “Shittttttt, she way better than that slut-ass sister of hers, ’cause in case ya don’t know, Shauntae was a true bad bitch with hers, a real thoroughbred! Damn! What a shame I had to kill the ho! But oh, well.” Elon laughed, shaking his head as he peeped around the corner. “Considering I’m here, you know it was only a matter of time before somebody got with her ‘good to set up a nigga’ ass!”