by Ellie Grace
seemed to be crawling everywhere.
Someone made a whooping sound and T looked over. There were two guys in gray hoodies running over. They were both white guys who looked like brothers. One chubbier than the other.
“T!”
“Yo,” He said shaking hands. “How’s it?”
“You seen Chris? We heard he stole a few bags from PB.”
“PB’s lookin’ for a fight now.” The chubby one said.
T gave a questioned look. “How’s he know it was him?”
“Says one of his boys saw him leaving his place.”
“Why would Chris be over there?”
“I don’t know, but you better not hold back from PB.” The chubby one said.
T shook his head. “Man, I’m going to work. God doesn’t make enough time for this BS.”
He walked away fists tight in front of him. He looked like he was shaking an imaginary person.
“Who’s Chris?”
“My little brother that can’t seem to ever listen.”
I didn’t ask any more questions. T seemed okay, but I didn’t know about his temper. Had I been better friends with him I might have asked about when we’d get to the music, but I didn’t want to upset him. I would go along with him until I couldn’t take it anymore.
We turned down a long road. I could see it led to a well-lit fenced in area with medium sized trucks. As soon as he walked through the gate a man yelled his name. T ran up the steps of the small one room office. I stood outside the door, looking through the small window.
His boss was a short, round belly man with thinning hair on the top of his head. He readjusted his pants as T walked in. He watched T’s every move. I could tell T was used to his boss’ stare.
T went over and got the keys from a key rack on the wall. Before he could turn back to the door his boss began to talk.
“You got any of that green on ya today, boy?”
T shook his head.
“I know you do,” His boss said coming up in his face. “You’re always high. It’s amazing you still have this job. I’d have to fire ya if you didn’t keep our percent up and didn’t run extra favors.”
“Are you done now, Frank?” T asked raising his eyebrows at his boss. “I’d like to work now.”
Frank growled. “Get to work!”
T walked out the door and barely looked at me as he ran to the truck. I ran after him. T hopped in the truck and got out his list of stops.
“Are you high right now?” I asked.
“Nah,” T said typing the address into the GPS. “As much as I want to be, I don’t want to give him a reason to actually fire me.”
“Then, why didn’t you say you weren’t?”
T turned on the truck and started to pull out. “Cause he knows I’m not. He just tries to degrade me, so I know my spot in the world.”
“And where’s that?”
“Somewhere between beggar and peasant. Right up there with uneducated fool.”
“Quit then.”
“And do what? There’s not much out there these days. My boss may suck, but I need this money. I’ll probably never move up in the system, but it’s money.”
“That’s sad man.”
“Like I said before, we try to be happy. Look at this. A truck with air conditioning and a radio. We’re set man. Pirate stations are blaring at night.” T smiled.
This was the first smile I had seen from him all night.
He turned on the radio to a real scratchy station and listened for a bit. Then he quickly flipped over to another station and another until he heard electronic bass sounds. As soon as he heard that he turned it up.
The music was instantly infectious. The beats were jittery and fun. I wished I could have been back at my club playing this music the way it made me want to dance. There were heavy bass lines and snares mixed with other electronic and reggae influences. The music was like a culture fusion. Some songs had a woman singing on them and men with Jamaican accents singing and rapping. It was definitely music that made you forget about whatever was on your mind. It was music that you wanted to dance to and be happy.
T made deliveries down streets I had never seen before. A lot of the homes looked nicer than the neighborhood we had come from. Each house had nice flowers and a fresh coat of paint. The street lights were in perfect condition here. I didn’t want to ask T how he felt about coming around places that were better than where he was from. After about thirty minutes the radio went dead.
“What happened?”
“Dunno,” T said shrugging his shoulders. “Maybe that’s all they’ve got tonight or cops found em.”
“Why don’t you buy your own radio station?”
T gave me a side glance. “Nobody’s got that money and no one’s gonna invest. This is all home grown. We’re in our bedrooms making this music.”
“You ever try to get it on the radio?”
“Tried, ya. Lots of times. Some people make it. Some don’t. We gotta take baby steps with the big boys in the industry. Especially with our hip hop.”
“What’s wrong with your hip hop?”
“It’s different from what you’re used to. It’s popular for you people to talk about cash and cars, but none of us can relate to that. Your rappers go around gloating about things most of the people that listen to that music will never get.”
I was embarrassed by this because it was true. “I know. It’s all sex, cars, cash, alcohol. We’ve got a bunch of one liners that we repeat over and over. There’s no message. If we took the chorus out of most of these songs we’d have like 10 bars.”
T laughed. “You’re passionate about it too. You might really like what they spit.”
“Hip hop is story telling. It’s poetry put to music, but the crap we’ve degraded it to isn’t even a story. But we’ll see. I’m tough with my music.”
“That’s all we do. We tell stories and express emotional times. You can’t make it with some fake cash, sex rap. It won’t happen. It’s a lot more violent and aggressive, but that’s how shit is here. They think I’m trying to start a war when I talk about gun violence, but it’s like no. I’m trying to tell you that my best friend jimmy got shot and the police didn’t do shit. We gotta get our aggression out somehow.”
“That’s what this music is about. I’m excited to hear it.”
T slammed down on the brakes seeing an old woman in the street. Smoke clouded the view from the burning rubber. T jumped out of the car and tried to get the woman to move.
“You threw my box on my porch this morning! You could have broken something in the box. I’m going to call your manager. My package could have been something valuable and you rats threw it on my steps.”
T kept calm and polite. “Ma’am was something broken?”
“No, it was a blanket I had ordered for my bedroom, but that doesn’t matter. You threw it on my steps.”
“Ma’am I don’t work the morning shift. If you have a problem you are welcome to call my manager, but I did not throw that package.”
“You threw it! I know you did!” She said starting to kick him. He led her off the street and he ran back into the truck. We could hear her screams as we zoomed down the road.
“This would be so much better if you were high.” I joked.
He smiled. “No doubt.”
T took us around a loop back to the office. He parked the truck and slipped into the office. Frank was asleep with drool dripping on the floor. T grabbed his envelope of money off the desk and hurried out the door.
We walked down the street we had used to come. This time instead of going straight we turned up a side street. I could tell that the street cleaners hadn’t been here in a while by the trash on the ground. There was a bright light from a convenience store shining up ahead. T picked up some diapers and a jug of whole milk. He also got a pricy chocolate bar with almonds in it. He bought everything and we left out back up the street.
I wasn’t sure why he’d bought those items, but I went
along. I couldn’t seem to find any street signs. I had planned to remember everything, so that I could come back tomorrow during the day.
We came up to a giant building that looked like 10 motels squashed and stacked on top of each other. It wasn’t dirty outside of the building though it had age to it. People had clothes lines hanging out from their windows.
We walked across a walkway into the main building. Then, we went up three flights of stairs. T took them two steps at a time. A few times I almost ran into a dark figure on the stairs. I said nothing to them and kept behind T.
We made it to the fourth floor. T went down a couple doors and opened it. As we walked in I could see a girl in the kitchen with a baby in her arms. T pointed to the couch for me to sit on.
“Who’s that?” The girl said.
“T.” The baby boy muttered.
The girl’s name was Nina. Nina was a black girl. She was average height with some meat on her bones. She had her hair short and curly.
I would have thought that was her baby and I would have thought T was her boyfriend, but I had that wrong. The baby was her 3 year old brother and T was a longtime friend. Nina had never met her father. Her mother wasn’t sure who her brother’s father was. Nina’s mother was a drug addict. She did and would do anything for drugs. Nina worked almost every moment she could and every free moment was taken over by giving her brother a sense of family.
Before Nina’s brother was born she had more time to do what she loved to do which was sing. T said it made her sad to sing her own songs now. She kept to old songs others had made up. Songs famous people were singing because her songs were too sad for her.
Nina and T went to put her brother to
