Ileaned to the right with my hand gripping the top of the steering wheel in my black on black AMG Benz. Pulling up at a gas station blasting the sounds of Rod Wave, I reached into my pocket and grabbed a wad of cash. After turning the music down, I looked over at one of my passengers. Lonna was fine as shit. Dark brown skin, heart shaped lips, big, round eyes. “Get me some cigars, a Vitamin Water, some salt-n-vinegar chips, and a honeybun. Get what you want.”
Lonna gave a curt nod, and she got out of the car while Misha got out of the back. I was dealing with Lonna first. After a month of getting to know her, she proposed a threesome with her homegirl, Misha. Misha was just as pretty as her and thick as hell, so I was with it. All it took was one night, and Misha was hooked. She damn near begged Lonna to keep the situation going, and Lonna knew that if I wanted to hit Misha again, I would. She wasn’t my girl, so her approval wasn’t necessary. In an effort to keep tabs on me and make sure I didn’t get in too deep with Misha, she agreed to the frequent threesomes. We were together so much, some people assumed we werein a polyamorous relationship, but I wasn’t in any kind of relationship. I just liked pussy, and they had plenty of it to give.
My personal phone vibrated in my lap, and I scooped it up in a hurry. Not even twenty people had my personal number. Lonna and Misha didn’t even have my personal number. That number was reserved for select family and the few friends that I had. When I saw that it was my cousin, Pierre calling, I accepted the call. “What up, G?”
“You gotta come to the spot on Evergreen right now.” Pierre’s tone was low, and the manner he was speaking in was calm, but the ice in his tone made me aware of the urgency of the situation. Something was wrong and since he’d called me five hours before asking me if I’d seen or heard from his brother, Eric, I assumed it was something concerning him.
“Aight. I’m like eleven minutes away.”
“Bet.”
Lonna and Misha sauntered out of the store side by side, and I knew I didn’t have time to drop them off. Lonna passed me the bag that contained the items I requested and my change. I didn’t like to assume because if I assumed the worst and got myself worked up and the issue wasn’t that big, then I got irritated and hype for nothing. My temper had been fucked up since I was a kid. When I got mad, I always wanted to fight and if it was someone that I couldn’t fight like my mother or an older person, I’d get so mad that I couldn’t fight them that I would throw my toys or do shit like punch the wall.
My mother was a prostitute when she got pregnant with me. Like most prostitutes, she had a vice. I didn’t know if the person existed that could sell their body day after day, night after night, and be completely sober while doing so. My mother used to drink a lot. And according to her, she didn’t know she was pregnant with me until she was almost five months. My grandmother used to say that I probably acted the way Idid because my mother drank during most of her pregnancy. Whatever the fuck that meant. Even as an adult, every time I saw a kid having a temper tantrum or crying until they turned red, it reminded me that I wasn’t abnormal as a child. So, I didn’t understand what my grandmother meant.
My mother didn’t stop selling her body until I was about eleven. Apparently, she knew who my father was because he lived an hour away, and he didn’t know she was a prostitute. My mother really liked him, and she only had unprotected sex with him. He took care of us financially until I was two, and then he found out when she wasn’t with him, she was turning tricks. He denied me and stopped speaking to her. My mother begged him to take a paternity test, and he refused until the court made him take one when she put him on child support. He ended up having to pay a few hundred dollars a month.
My mom stopped tricking when she found another man to take care of her. He wasn’t rich, but he moved us out of my grandmother’s house into a decent enough neighborhood. I wasn’t sure what my mom had against working a regular job, but it wasn’t for her. When they broke up a year and a half later, we went right back to my grandmother’s house. My father became a pastor, and my mother was an unemployed, ex-prostitute with a drinking problem. She didn’t walk the hoe stroll, but she kept a man around that would give her money and buy her alcohol in exchange for sex. I knew early on that my mom was a hoe from the conversations my grandmother used to have with her sisters about her.
The older I got, I became ashamed of my mother because she was known around our hood as the woman to keep your man away from. She’d fuck anybody that had a few dollars to spend. I was so embarrassed by her, that when I had to go out in public with her, I’d always walk far behind her, so no one would know we were together. I used to hear so many people say my momused to be pretty before alcohol and a fast life beat her down. She looked older than her fifty-two years. Her caramel brown complexion looked dry and dull. She kept her curly, salt and pepper hair pulled back in a ponytail. My mother stood at 5’8 and was slim for the most part, but the pudge in her stomach was similar to a woman in her second trimester of pregnancy. I was thirty-two, and my mother still lived with my grandmother.
The older I got and the more rebellious I became, my father and I clashed more and more. Especially since, in my eyes, he was fake as fuck. There were weekends I stayed with him and saw the various women, but he stood in the pulpit on Sundays pretending to be a man of God. Shit, some of the women that came to his crib to get slutted out were members of his church. That shit was so fake to me and it was the main reason that when he preached to me, it went in one ear and out the other. When I dropped out of school in my junior year, my father stopped speaking to me. He ended up marrying some Asian woman, and they had two kids together. We still didn’t speak, and I didn’t give a fuck.
Finally, I pulled up on the block and immediately saw the crowd. Eric’s white Acura was parked out front, and I almost breathed a sigh of relief. If he was there, then shit couldn’t be too bad. Hearing the gut-wrenching scream of a female twisted my insides, and I held my breath rather than pushing it out.
“I’ll be right back,” I mumbled to Lonna and Misha. That was their cue to stay in the car.
I observed Pierre standing with his jaw muscles clenched. His nostrils expanded with anger, and the look on his face was a mixture of despair and hatred. “What’s good?” I asked him with bated breath.
“I haven’t heard from Eric in damn near two days. His car wasn’t here two hours ago. I left and came back, and it was parked out here. Open that muhfuckin’ door and see what thefuck they did to my brother.” Pierre was still calm. Too calm. He wasn’t hype. He wasn’t crying. He was pissed, but he was calm. And that shit was dangerous.
I’d seen everything in my life from my mother fucking random strange men with her bedroom door open to niggas getting their brains blown out on the block, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to open that car door and see what was waiting inside. Sirens wailed in the distance as I grabbed the door handle and opened.
“What the fuck?” I roared before stepping back. I could only watch for a few seconds. I had to slam the door closed. The smell that wafted out of the car made me gag.
The smell of burnt flesh was searing my nose hairs. From head to toe, my nigga was charred. Someone had set him on fire. I looked over at Pierre and saw tears in his eyes. I had never seen Pierre cry. Not even when we were thirteen, and his older sister’s remains were found in a wooded area after she’d been missing for two weeks. Eric would be the second child that my aunt Jada lost. He was the second sibling that Pierre lost. Fuck.
“Who you think did this shit, man?” I stared off down the street because I didn’t want to look into Pierre’s face.
Ninety-eight percent of the people that knew me, dubbed me an asshole. Not much bothered me. I was the kind of nigga that you couldn’t pay to care about shit. My grandmother told me a long time ago that I didn’t care about anybody but myself, and I never denied the shit. Seeing what someone had done to Eric had my chest tight. Niggas was gon’ pay for this.
“It had to be Drew and his hoe ass people. Drew’s been trying to say that Eric’s name was on his paperwork for months, but nobody has seen it. My brother wasn’t no snitch. I think that nigga was mad about my brother taking his clientele because his dope was more potent. Eric was out here getting money hand over fist, and niggas didn’t like that. He made up that snitchingshit, so people wouldn’t fuck with Eric. Eric saw him a week ago and knocked his ass out. You can’t tell me he wasn’t behind this.”
“Say less.”
Two hours later,I was sitting on the steps of the same house that Eric’s body had been delivered to. It was a spot where we all chilled at. The niggas that sold dope hustled from there. Some of them fucked bitches there. There were many nights that we played the game, smoked, and drank there. I didn’t sell drugs. I sold guns and when I didn’t have guns, I had a connect that got me promethazine. I also stole luxury cars every now and then. Shit, I had plenty of ways to make money. A nigga had even cracked a few credit cards. I was the true definition of a hustler. I didn’t like being too predictable. If I sold drugs, that was what I’d mostly be known for, and it would be easier for me to get on the police’s radar. At least, that was how I viewed it.
I didn’t want to leave my people, so I got a rideshare to come get Lonna and Misha. They wanted to stay, but I sent them on their way fast as hell. Maybe they did want to comfort me, but a part of me believed they just wanted to be nosey. They had to get the fuck on. This was a family tragedy, and it was messed up. Everybody was standing around whispering and being nosey. The bottle of Hennessy that I was gripping by the neck was the only thing keeping me from spazzing on everybody that was out there looking, talking, and recording. Pierre’s baby mama had to literally pull me away to keep me from snatching a cell phone from a bystander’s hand. I let everyone within earshot know if I saw anything posted on social media, they were getting their ass beat. I didn’t give a fuck if it was man, woman, or child.
When my aunt came, I had to walk away and go around the corner. I couldn’t take it. After she lost her daughter, my aunt Jada tried her best to be okay. She began going to church twice a week, and when she wasn’t in church, she was watching pastors on television or reading the Bible. She prayed more than she did anything else, but the gut-wrenching wail that traveled around the corner and into my ears made my knees buckle.
“Fuck!” I hissed.
I went to school with Drew, but I didn’t know him for real. The last I saw him, he was with some chick named Wonder. Shorty was bad and with a name like that, she was hard to forget. I knew Pierre wanted him, but if I saw him first, it would be hard to let him get past me. Taking a swig of my Hennessey, I cursed again before listening for my aunt’s cries. When I didn’t hear any, I rounded the corner and sat back on the porch steps. I ignored everyone around me as I stared at the spot where Eric’s car had been before the police had it towed. There was still a heavy police presence on the block, and it was pissing me off because I wanted to fire up my blunt. It wasn’t like they were going to go out of their way to find Eric’s killers anyway.
Sucking my teeth, I twisted the cap off my bottle and took a large swig despite the fact the block was crawling with police. Most people may have classified me as selfish, but I was ready to do whatever I had to do for Eric – whether that consisted of helping to put him away or making my gun spray. A red Camry pulled into the spot where Eric’s car had been, and I clenched my teeth together as I waited to see who was going to emerge. Dark tint prevented me from seeing inside the car. When Ashanti hopped out, I shook my head and took another swig of cognac. It was about to be some shit, and if I wasn’t in the mood, I knew Pierre wasn’t in the mood, either.
Ashanti’s eyes were laced with genuine concern, and I knew she really cared about Pierre, but it wasn’t her place to be here. Ihad just parted my lips to speak when Nina, Pierre’s baby mama, flew out of the house.
