by Hood Rich
“Yeah, whatever, Demetrius. I bet I won’t stank so bad after you see all of this.” She unzipped the fanny pack and pulled out a wad of hundred-dollar bills, waving them back and forth.
Just by eye balling I could tell that it was more than five gees, easily. I was hoping that Paper was gon’ split that money down the middle with me. I mean, we never had a problem bussing shit down together before, but at times you just never knew. After all, we were both coming off of monetary losses.
He let go of his nose and smiled. “Aunty, you know I’m just playing with you.” He laughed and tried to give her a hug.
She shook her head and pushed him away. “N’all, nigga, fuck you. You always trying to put yo’ hands on somebody like I’m your child. You know damn well that if I’m beating on this backdoor it’s because I’m in danger and I need to get the fuck away from whoever chasing me. Otherwise, when have I ever?”
Paper took a deep breath and nodded in submission. “You right, TT. I should have known. I’m sorry. Now let’s talk about this knot you finna spend with me.”
She smacked her lips. “Just like yo’ damn mama. All y’all care about is money.” She licked her thumb and started to count through the hundred-dollar bills. “Well, this seven gees right here, and I’m trying to spend at least half of it as long as you talking right. So, I guess my question to you is, how much are you going to give me for thirty-five hundred?” She asked, turning her head sideways and licking her crusty lips.
Paper crossed his arms and rubbed his chin. “Yo, what you lookin’ for?” He walked up the stairs and into the trap with her following close behind.
I tried to let them get a little distance away. I didn’t want to walk up the stairs directly behind her because the odor coming from her body was mind numbing to put things lightly.
As they disappeared into the house, there was a knock on the door. I almost ignored it because I wanted to hurry up and get upstairs before Paper snatched up all of old girl’s money. Half of thirty-five hunnit was $1,750. I needed that lil’ boost ‘cuz I wanted to spend a few chips on my sisters and start to hit Andrea back, even though she was hollering all she wanted me to do was pay her bills from here on out, now that she’d gotten back thirteen of the fifteen stacks.
“Who is it?” I asked through the wooden door.
“It’s Ralph. I just left here about an hour ago. I want the same shit or nothing at all,” he said through the door.
I switched my pistol around to the front of my pants and cocked back the hammer, slowly easing open the door until his face came into view. It was a familiar, and he in fact had been there about an hour before. “I got that same work. What you looking for, homeboy?”
He was shaking as if he was cold. “I got three hundred and these Prada leather jackets if you want ‘em. You can give me a fifty piece apiece. They fresh off the rack, and in the store, they were going for eight hundred apiece.” He covered his teeth with his tongue. His eyes were bucked and glossy. He smelled like motor oil and dope smoke. I could tell that he must’ve smoked his last rock before he came.
“Let me see them coats, homey.” I opened the door a lil’ more and he handed them through. I flipped on the light in the hallway and looked the leathers over real closely. They still smelled brand new.
I knew that Prada costed some money, and in time I would be able to put my sisters inside of the fabric just to prove a point to the world that called them bums. My mind was extremely materialistic because I had never had anything. It wouldn’t be until after I made my first ten million dollars that my thinking started to change, and I began to understand that designer clothing was all a part of the bigger scheme to keep our people blinded and made to feel inferior. A mental case of bondage.
Just by looking over the coats I could tell that both of them would fit Keyonna and Kesha perfectly. I fixed the hammer on my gun, dug into my crotch and pulled out the bag of yellow crack rocks. I took out ten dimes for the coats and another thirty for the $300 that he had. I was thinking of giving him a deal on the three hunnit but decided against it because I wanted to have enough dope to get half of Shirley’s thirty-five hundred.
After I was situated, I opened the door. “I’ma cop these coats and take care of that three hunnit that you got too. Hand me the money.”
He dug into his dirty jeans and pulled out fifteen twenties, handing them to me, and then I handed him the forty dime bags before closing the door.
When I got back upstairs and into the house, Shirley was just putting a rock into her glass pipe and setting fire to it. I took the coats and placed them on the arm of Paper’s living room couch, directly across from where Shirley sat. Then, I took a seat and looked her over as she inhaled deeply with her eyes wide open and her jaws puffed out.
She held the smoke for what seemed like a full minute, then blew it into the air, reached on to the coffee table, and broke another piece off of one of the rocks that Paper had given her, before shaking her head. “I don’t know, Paper, this seem like the same shit to me. I don’t feel no different than what I felt last night. By the way Ralph was talking, he made it seem like you had that real good shit. If that’s so, then you holding out because this ain’t it.” She picked it up and held it at her eye as if it were a priceless diamond. “He said it was supposed to be way more yellow than this.” She shrugged and stuffed another piece into her glass pipe before lighting it.
I ain’t wanna step on my man’s toes or nothing like that, but I could tell by the way she was talking that she wasn’t about to spend that whole thirty-five hundred dollars in Paper’s trap. I got to thinking she was gon’ try and low ball him, and like I said before, I needed to be able to split that money down the middle with him. I got to imagining my sister’s wearing the same old clothes over and over again, and that just didn’t sit right with me.
I reached into my crotch and pulled out the bag of dimes, took one out and slid it across the table. It landed right next to one of Paper’s dimes, nearly the same size, but mine was bright yellow. Like Andrea had said, it looked like a piece of cheese. “Try that right there, Shirley.”
She was on her way to inhaling the rock that she’d already lit inside of her pipe when she stopped, looked down at my rock, took her pipe and dumped it out before breaking mine down the middle and filling her pipe with it. As soon as she had that bad boy stuffed, she took her long flame and lit the tip, inhaling hard so much so that the fire was sucked into the pipe’s hole, burning the rock inside of it almost immediately. She took four deep breaths and held the smoke inside of her lungs with her eyes closed, constantly sucking it in deeper and deeper through clenched teeth.
Paper curled his upper lip and shot me an evil look, then mugged her. I didn’t give a fuck. I was on a mission for my sisters, and due to the fact that Shirley was a well-known hype all throughout the slums, I knew that her word of mouth about my product would have the fiends coming out from all over the city.
After she blew the remaining smoke to the ceiling, she looked over at me with big, glossy eyes and a weird smile on her face. She unzipped her knap sack and pulled out the wad of hundreds. “I want five thousand worth of that shit right there, baby, and I want it right now.” She reached and grabbed the little piece of rock that was left and stuffed it into her pipe after handing me the money.
Paper frowned and shook his head. “Hell n’all, Shirley. You my muhfucking Aunty. Let me split that bread with my nigga. You take half of his and half of mine. That’s how we get down,” he said, digging deep into his crotch and pulling out a Ziploc bag full of gray rocks.
Shirley inhaled the dope deep into her lungs, then blew it to the ceiling. Her glass pipe cracked, so she sat it on the table and pulled another one out of her bra. She looked at Paper from the corners of her eyes while still sitting on the love seat. “Paper, you ain’t gon’ tell me how to spend my money. I said I want five thousand dollars’ worth of this yellow shit that he serving, and that’s just that. Your dope is okay, but it’s be
en stepped on way too much. It makes my chest hurt. Now if you and him can come to some kind of agreement, I don’t care. All I’m saying is all I want to leave with is that shit he got, period.” She looked over at me and smiled.
Before it was all said and done, I gave her five gees worth of the product and wound up giving Paper five hunnit of it just for letting me serve his aunt, even though I didn’t have to. I just didn’t want him feeling some type of way.
After Shirley left, Paper turned to me and asked me if I could teach him how to cook his dope the right way, and of course I did. The next four hours were spent with us popping the last of his dope and me teaching him how to cook his product the right way. By the time we were finished for the night, and both out of the dope that we had bagged up, I had made a quick $9,000 even though three hundred of it was in change. I felt accomplished and like I was on to something.
Thirty minutes after leaving Paper’s Trap, I wound up making it back to the block that Andrea’s house was on. As soon as I pulled on to it, my heart dropped into my stomach at what I saw.
Chapter 7
Her name was Aaliyah. She was 5’4 and weighed about 125 pounds. Brown skinned with Asian like eyes and a nice body with a fat booty that made niggas pay attention. Me and Paper went to Washington High School with her, and on the first day after seeing her we’d made a pact that neither one of us would try and get at her so that we could avoid another Tasha situation. But she was cold and so fine that I didn’t know for a fact that I would be able to keep that promise, especially after I discovered that she lived on the same block as Andrea. We often saw each other on our way to school and just around the neighborhood. Every time we made eye contact, she’d always be the first to break her stare. I think that she found me just as hot as I found her, but I wasn’t sure because she was bad.
She had been the head cheerleader at our school and a real nerd almost in every class that I shared with her. For me, that was intimidating because while I wasn’t a dummy or nothing like that, I definitely wasn’t as scholastically aware as she was.
Her house was the third one from the corner of our block, and as I was pulling on to it, I saw this heavy-set, light skinned man had her up against a black on black Navigator by her throat, hollering in her face like he’d lost his mind or something. She had tears in her eyes and was beating at his hands. She was dressed in a real small mini skirt, and every time she moved in the slightest, it caused for it to rise and it looked very indecent. Especially because I remembered her for being this real shy lil’ girl with a pretty face. So, as I rolled by, I let down my window so I could hear what dude was saying.
“Bitch, I don’t care what you wanna do. You gon’ get yo’ ass out here and work like the rest of these hoes. Ain’t none of y’all special!” He took a step back and smacked her face, then grabbed her by the hair and pushed her toward the Navigator so hard that she crashed into it and fell to the ground.
I shook my head. Fuck that. I threw my car in park and tucked all of my money under the seat before adjusting the .38 on my waist and getting out. I jogged over to where they were and got in between them, standing face to face with the chubby nigga, while she tried to make it to her feet. “Yo, you ain’t gotta be beating her like that, my nigga. That shit ain’t cool,” I said, already having visions of popping this stud in the stomach or something.
He frowned and stepped further into my face. “What the fuck you say, lil’ nigga?” His breath smelled he’d just eaten some kind of fish. I didn’t like it being blown on me. I already didn’t like dudes to begin with.
I pushed him as hard as I could and watched him fly backward into her front gate. He stumbled and nearly lost his balance, and I was on his ass, grabbing him by his Versace gold and black shirt, wrapping it into my fist with my other one pulling back, ready to buss him in his shit.
Aaliyah ran over and grabbed my arm. “No, don’t hit him, Rich, please. If you do, he gon’ kill me later,” she cried.
Now that she was standing close to me I could see what had to be his hand print on her face. That shit got me even more pissed off. I noticed that there were neighbors all around starting to come out of their houses and onto their porches.
“What? This nigga beating you like you ain’t nothing and you telling me not to whoop his ass?” I asked, confused as hell.
She looked over to him and then nodded as he struggled to get away from me by trying to pry my grip from his shirt. “Please. You just don’t understand. He owns me. That’s just the way it is.” She whimpered, and it literally broke my heart.
I looked at this fat faced, soft ass nigga and I swear I wanted to whoop this stud in front of the whole neighborhood. I didn’t know what they had going on or what she meant by that, but I felt I had to listen to her.
Especially when her mother opened the door to their house and made her way down their steps with a can of St. Ides Premium in her hand. “Hey! You! You let him go right now before I stab yo’ ass!” She sat the can of beer on the steps and pulled out a steak knife from her waist band, making her way toward me.
The whole time this bitch ass nigga wasn’t saying shit. He had this lil’ smirk on his face that made me want to get up with him even more. I started to imagine some pimp like this getting hold of one of my sisters. That shit got me vexed. As Aaliyah’s mother got closer to me, I let him go and took a step back. It was then that I noticed that five more girls had gotten out of his truck and were looking at us.
Aaliyah caught her mother before she came out of the gate. “Mama, it’s okay. It was just a misunderstanding,” she said, holding her hands in front of her.
The yellow nigga smiled and fixed his clothes. “Yeah, mama, it was just a misunderstanding. Ain’t no need to poke this clown. He was just being a good Samaritan.” He laughed, looking me in the eyes before looking back at her.
I nodded. “Check this out, homey. I don’t give a fuck what y’all got going on, but when you come on this block, you check that pimp shit in at the corner. Don’t be beating on this female in front of her whole neighborhood. That ain’t cool, and that ain’t something that these other lil’ females should be witnessing. You understand that?” I felt my temper getting hot, because once again, I kept imagining this nigga snatching up either Keyonna or Kesha and doing the same things to them.
Every time my mind’s eye played the movie in my head it made me want to splash this fool.
He reached and grabbed a handful of Aaliyah’s hair, causing her to yelp out loud with her head tilted backward. “Like this bitch said, I own her, and since I do, I’ll beat this bitch where ever I want to. Now do you understand that?”
I lowered my eyes, heated. “What?” I reached under my shirt and was about to pull that .38 special out when I looked to my right and saw Andrea running down the street in just her robe and house shoes. Seeing her made he keep my pistol tucked away. Before she could get over to where we were, I simply smiled and walked to my car, got in and pulled down the street to meet her half way. That last thing I needed was for this nigga to know that she had any relation to me.
In my opinion, the niggas in Milwaukee were cowards. Most of them weren’t really about that life and they were afraid to go to war with you. So, instead of doing so, they had a habit of taking their hatred for you out on a vulnerable person in your family. That shit made me sick, so instead of stopping in front of Andrea, I drove past her and all the way off of the block, then down the alley, parking my car in the back of our crib.
She came into the house about ten minutes later. I was sitting at the living room table counting stacks and taking inventory of my product. She walked in front of the table, eyeing me with anger. I could tell because her face was red.
I slapped a rubber band around one stack after the next, pretty much ignoring her until she slapped her hand on the table. “Rich! Don’t you see me standing here?”
I slapped another rubber band around the fourth stack. “Yeah, I see you. So, what’s good?” I grabbed the fi
fth one, ready to do the same thing when she frowned, pulled a chair out and sat down at the table, taking her hand and putting it on the money to stop me in my tracks. I mugged her.
“What is wrong with you? You see some pimp nigga beating his bitch and you try and break it up? For what?” She reached and grabbed a hold of my chin.
I exhaled and looked into her pretty eyes. “I didn’t know that Aaliyah was selling pussy at first. I thought it was just some nigga beating on a girl that I knew from school. That’s all. I wasn’t about to roll past and do nothing.” I moved her hand off of the money and continued to rubber band it up in stacks of one thousand.
Andrea pushed her chair back loudly, stood up and shook her head. “So, what if that was the case? So, what if she wasn’t sellin’ pussy and you rolled up and saw her getting her ass whooped? That’s her problem, not yours. Your priorities are me and your sisters. Fuck that lil’ girl. We in here living pay check to pay check, and now we ain’t even got that, and you about to risk yourself to save somebody that don’t matter? Really?” She asked, looking disgusted.
I put a rubber band around the seventh stack and lowered my head. I got to feeling horrible because what she was getting at was making sense, even though in my heart of hearts I knew that I would never be able to sit back and watch a female get beat by a dude without doing something. I’d grown up watching my father and many other men beat my mother senseless, so it was hard for me to see what was taking place and not try and help in any way that I could.
“What if my friend never called me and told me what was going on down there, and you’d wound up beating him senseless like you almost did Maxwell? Or what if he would have shot your Captain Save a Ho ass? Then what? What would me and the girls do, Rich? Huh? Because we can’t survive without you figuring the game out and mastering that shit.” She exhaled loudly and walked around until she was standing in the back of my chair.
