41
I
t had rained blood in Harlem. Black, male, adolescent blood. Young blood. Virgin blood. Imperial blood. African-American blood.
It had been drained along with the gifts that had been swallowed for an undetermined amount of time. Me had swept through after his master and swallowed the gifts and the spirits whole. It had been quite a night in Harlem. The frolicking of beasts had occurred at the expense of a people who had already paid a huge price.
The rising of the morning sun would bring a wail of pain from Harlem that would reach heaven. Unbeknownst to them, their cries would not fall on deaf ears.
The drops of blood were splattered against a landscape of a generation untold. And yet there was not a drop to be found on the streets. There certainly wasn't a drop to be found in the bodies that had been strewn about Harlem. But no deed goes unrecorded.
Tracie Burlingame didn't know yet that there were many who had joined her in her grief. All she knew was that she was bone weary tired, and she needed to face Dre and Michael. But they weren't home yet; the house was empty. She also needed to make burial arrangements for her son.
When that was done, she was going to pay a visit to Anita Lily Mae Young. She could still hear the old woman's words: “Don't you be coming back here to me, girl, I mean it.”
To Anita Lily Mae Young was exactly where she would go. This woman had seen something, and maybe she could help lead her to finding out who was killing her sons. Tracie intended to find out, that was for sure.
She dropped on the couch in all her bone-weary tiredness. She kicked off her shoes. Unconsciously she went to put her feet up on the table, until she realized it wasn't there anymore. She had smashed it with the fireplace poker.
She tucked her aching feet underneath her instead. She pulled a cushion under her head. Instantly she fell asleep.
She stayed that way until she felt someone standing over her, hovering, the shadow falling over her facial features. Tracie knew she must get up. She struggled to pull herself from the deep, dreamless sleep back to consciousness.
“Tracie,” Souljah Boy said. “Take my hand.” She did. “Come with me.”
Tracie looked at Souljah Boy, wondering what he was doing here. She didn't see Dre. Usually he hung out with Dre. They'd been tight since they were kids. But Dre wasn't in sight.
As they walked, Tracie turned to look at Souljah Boy.
She was visually struck by his appearance. There was a light shining from him. He was illuminated from the inside out.
“Souljah Boy, what . . . ?” Tracie began to ask, but Souljah Boy cut her off.
“Shush,” he said.
Together they walked to the front door of the brownstone. Souljah Boy opened the door. He stepped through, still holding Tracie's hand. Tracie gasped. This wasn't her street. They were standing on the edge of a cliff.
Souljah Boy pointed. “Look.”
Tracie looked down and saw a black, gaping hole. It was sucking in little black babies. There were so many of them. It was like a huge black vacuum, just sucking them in.
Someone stood at the edge of the hole. Tracie saw the person shoving something. Finally she realized they were shoving what looked like a manhole cover over the black hole. She heard a loud clang; the hole was covered. She couldn't see the babies anymore. They were gone.
Before Tracie could catch her breath or even begin to question Souljah Boy, many little black babies began to fall through the atmosphere. Just as in her dream, some force was grabbing them and wrapping them in a white, silky swaddling. Right there on her doorstep in the middle of Harlem.
She turned to Souljah Boy.
“Have faith. Do not be afraid of your losses, Tracie,” he said. “In time all things will be rectified.”
Before she could respond, Souljah Boy was gone. Tracie looked up to find her son Michael staring down at her on the couch.
“Michael?” she asked. “How did you get here?”
“I live here, remember?” Michael said.
“Yeah, I know that, but I mean . . .” Tracie's voice trailed off. She looked around the living room. “Never mind.” She struggled to sit up on the couch. “I've got something bad to tell you.”
“I already know, Ma. Rashod is dead. We need to talk.”
Tracie's eyes filled with newly formed tears. “Where's Dre?”
“I don't know. I haven't seen him yet, but I'm sure he'll be here, Ma. He'll be here.”
Tracie nodded past the lump in her throat. “Would you mind terribly if I just laid down in my room for a while? And then we'll talk when I get up. I just need a little time.”
Michael looked at Tracie. He reached out and pulled her to him, hugging her tightly. He smoothed her hair down. “Naw, Mommy, that'll be fine.”
Michael kissed her tear-stained cheek. He released her and headed for his room. “I'll be here whenever you're ready. I ain't going anywhere.”
Tracie nodded her appreciation. Michael had always been the mature one out of all her children. Dre was the one with attitude. Rashod had been the one with anger. Randi had just been the baby. Her boys, her family, all she had in the world, and now two of them were gone.
Her thoughts leaped to Souljah Boy. She could have sworn he was here. It had been so real. He had told her to have faith. Not to be afraid of her losses. This was the boy Tracie used to feed, yell at, and give a good beat-down to along with her own kids.
She shook herself. At the thought of Souljah Boy, goose bumps had broken out on her arm. “Michael?”
Michael stopped and turned around. “Yeah?”
“Did you see Souljah Boy when you came in?”
“Naw. Dre's not here, so he wouldn't be here. Why?”
“Nothing. I was just wondering; that's all.”
Michael gave her a queer look, then continued on to his room. He had things of his own that he needed to sort out in his mind before he talked to Tracie anyway. He needed to decide how much she could handle. He would have to tread carefully with her.
Tracie knew she must be bugging. Of course he wouldn't have seen Souljah Boy. Nor would he have seen the steep cliff that was just outside their door, or the many black babies falling through the atmosphere. For some inexplicable reason she knew that.
Tracie got up. She walked to the front door and pulled it open. There was no sign of Souljah Boy, the cliff, or falling black babies. There was only the street, as it had always been. She sighed and went to her room for some much needed rest.
She couldn't explain what she had seen, but one thing she knew for sure: she wasn't going to run from it this time. It had happened. She wasn't crazy. She knew she had seen what she'd seen.
She had stood with Souljah Boy looking out over the cliff, just as sure as she had stood at her front door. Of that there was no doubt.
“Have faith.” Tracie embraced the spoken words as they enveloped her in their cloud. She knew she would need it. She could not rely on anyone. She hadn't thought about what it meant to have faith, or what it meant to reach out to the spirit of the Lord, in so long.
All she had relied on was herself. Her own power. Her own capabilities and her money, which she wielded like a sword in front of people. But none of that had prevented her sons from being murdered. Murdered. The word startled Tracie as it entered her mind like a foreign invasion.
She hadn't wanted to admit that to herself, but it was true. Her sons had been murdered, just as Raymond had been murdered long ago. She had fought against it, but now she would have to face it.
Now she knew that she'd require more help than she could give herself. It dawned on her in a sudden realization that someone or something was trying to help her. That must be the reason she'd been having the weird dream.
Or maybe it was just a nightmare. But for some reason she was starting not to think so. Souljah Boy had looked so different to her. Why? What was going on?
Something was trying to reach her. Tracie shook herself. Maybe she was going off the deep end. Maybe she was under too much pressure.
Suddenly, unbidden, she recalled a long-buried incident. There was a woman who used to take her to church when she was a kid. She used to spend the night at the woman's house with her kids. Old Mrs. Peyton. Laura Peyton. She hadn't thought about her in many years.
On this particular night Tracie had leaned back in her chair. The chair slipped, and she fell back, busting her head open on an old radiator. Immediately, blood gushed from the wound.
When Mrs. Peyton had called her mother to tell her what had happened, her mother had told her to take her immediately to Harlem Hospital.
Instead, Mrs. Peyton had asked her, “Do you believe Jesus Christ can heal you?”
With all the faith and innocence of a child, Tracie had answered, “Yes.”
“Then he will,” Mrs. Peyton had told her.
She had anointed Tracie's head with oil, told her to get on her knees, and there they had prayed together. Tracie's little heart had reached out and yearned for Christ to heal her, and he had.
The following morning a wound that would have definitely required stitches was completely closed and healed on its own. Tracie had been delighted. “It's healed,” she had told Mrs. Peyton. “It's healed.”
“I know, child. All you have to do is believe. That's what I told you.”
Where had that memory come from? My God, that had been so long ago, she'd forgotten about it. Nothing else like it had ever happened to her.
Suddenly a picture of the old black preacher at the church flashed in her mind. She felt a profound sense of comfort. She could see the Bible with its two flames of fire shooting up on the sides. She could almost reach out and touch it. She wished she had.
On her way to the bathroom the phone rang. She picked it up to hear Whiskey's voice. She arranged for a special courier whom both Whiskey and she trusted to deliver the guns to him from her salon.
She wondered what had made him change his mind and suggest this, but whatever it was, she was grateful. She didn't ask questions. It was too much to deal with all that was happening plus Whiskey and his weapons.
She was beginning to hate him, his dangerous aura, and his weapons that she had made a mint off of, not to mention his extreme selfishness.
The real deal was, Whiskey had had a momentary change of heart with a little help from outside forces. He had decided that with all her troubles, she didn't have to do it personally, as long as she agreed to the arrangementsâwhich she did.
The truth of it was, Whiskey had decided that Tracie Burlingame was too hot on the streets of Harlem. He quickly wanted to disassociate himself from her after learning that it had rained blood in Harlem, following the same pattern as the deaths of Tracie's sons. The police would be all over her.
Soon. Very soon.
Whiskey, being the shrewd man that he was, simply decided it was time to part company. Time to move his assets straight out of Harlem. Harlem was raining blood. Whiskey didn't want to get splattered with any of it.
Besides, Whiskey would never admit it in a million years, but he was scared, in a major way. Me had stepped to Whiskey on a personal level and simply told him, “I am Me. You will leave Tracie Burlingame alone.”
Me had stared at Whiskey.
Something in Whiskey's bowels shook loose. Whiskey nodded without ever saying a word.
“Good,” Me said.
He had taken his leave of Whiskey then, but not before Whiskey heard the symphony of voices that swelled in him. Not before someone sneezed, and it wasn't Me.
And not before he witnessed a legion of snakes writhing and slithering inside Me's form, their lizardlike tongues whipping out and swallowing people, actual people, whole. It was all Whiskey could do to keep from fainting like some punk.
Yes, it was raining blood in Harlem, but that was the least of all that was going on. Whiskey hadn't wanted any part of it.
Tracie lay down on her bed after her conversation and arrangements with Whiskey. Then she wondered, where was her son Andre Burlingame?
Tracie Burlingame trembled at the thought.
42
D
re. Andre, actually. Andre Burlingame. He sat in a semi-stupor in Souljah Boy's crowded living room. Souljah Boy had a one-bedroom apartment in the Abraham Lincoln projects, and every room in the house was stacked and littered with books, papers, DVDs, videos, tapes, and recordings of every kind.
There was barely anywhere to sit. Souljah Boy had moved a stack of manuscripts, essays, and papers from a small footstool so Dre could sit down.
Dre had gone to Souljah Boy's apartment in his current state after having been summoned by one of his many confidential contacts to 139
th
Street and St. Nicholas Avenue the night before to shoot photographs of another murder that had taken place in Harlem.
He had already delivered the ones of Randi to his contact. They were at the
Amsterdam News.
He wasn't going to let them bury his brother's life like so much garbage, so he figured the close-ups would shake somebody into action. He hadn't counted on the second set of photographs he was to take being of his brother Rashod. But they were.
He had arrived to discover that another one of his brothers had been slain. It had shaken him to his very core. He couldn't go home. He couldn't stay on the streets. It looked as though somebody was trying to kill all of them.
So he had gone to Souljah Boy's apartment. He didn't know where his mother was. He didn't know where his now only brother, Michael, was. He'd been calling the house, and no one answered. He'd paged Tracie and gotten no answer, either. He hoped they weren't dead, too.
He had sat on the footstool with Souljah Boy's aging documents and many papers scattered at his feet. He had not moved from that spot since his arrival.
It wasn't helping matters that Souljah Boy was different, too. More reservedâhe didn't knowâmore something, as if he had been dipped in a ray of light or something. His world was being turned upside down.
Souljah Boy's face had a sheen almost like when a person sweated hard and glistened with the moisture of it, except that Souljah Boy's face was dry.
He looked as if he had swallowed the sun and it was shining from inside him. Maybe he was just losing it . . . seeing things that really weren't there.
Finally Dre had voiced his worst fear: “I hope Tracie's not dead.”
“She isn't,” Souljah Boy replied.
Dre looked over at him from lowered long, silky lashes inherited from Tracie. “How do you know? Rashod is, you know.”
“I know Rashod is. But Tracie isn't.”
“Somebody's killing my family, man. Straight up. Maybe we're next. We should have police protection or something.”
“You don't need police protection, Dre. Nobody's gonna kill you.”
Suddenly something stuck out in Dre's mind. “How did you know Rashod was dead? I just told you.”
“I hear things, Dre.”
Dre nodded. That was probably true. Souljah Boy was plugged into his own brand of information sources. Dre let it drop. He'd never known Souljah Boy to tell a lie in his life, even when they were kids. Even when Souljah Boy knew that the truth would land them in hot water, especially with Tracie. He would tell it anyway. Then they would all endure Tracie's wrath.
Dre had constantly told him to stop doing that truth crap when they could get in trouble, but Souljah Boy had his own mind.
“The truth will set you free,” he had told Dre once when they were in trouble.
“The truth will get our asses kicked,” Dre had replied. And sure enough, it had. But that hadn't ever stopped Souljah.
Dre was silent for a time. Souljah Boy just watched him intently.
“How do you know, man, that we won't be next?”
“Because I know.”
“How do you know?” Dre repeated, not satisfied with Souljah Boy's answer. Though he would never admit it, he suddenly found himself wanting to hear some of Souljah Boy's religious ramblings. He needed to hear something, anything that was going to make him feel better.
But whereas Souljah Boy usually answered almost any question with some type of spiritual coating, he had not done so, so far.
Souljah Boy sighed.
He knew Dre couldn't handle much, but he was seeking comfort in the spirit. Souljah Boy needed to give him something. Maybe it was time he grew up to the real world anyway.
“Your family is under the protection of Jesus Christ, Dre.”
Dre snorted, although subconsciously this had been exactly what he was looking for. “You think so, son? Then why are two of my brothers dead? Some protection.”
Souljah Boy was patient. “Sometimes things happen for a reason. They are for a higher purpose. Besides, Dre, just because they're dead doesn't mean they aren't under his protection.”
Dre was exasperated. “Stop talking to me in riddles, Souljah. Dead is dead. They're dead.” Dre began to wring his hands so Souljah Boy wouldn't see them trembling, but of course, he did.
He had known Dre would tremble before he actually did.
“ âYea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of deathâ' ”
Dre cut Souljah Boy off. “Don't start this again, Souljah.”
Souljah Boy got up. He went to the bookshelf. He removed a big old black and gold, ancient-looking book. It was so dusty he had to blow dust off the cover. He returned to sit across from Dre.
He opened up the Bible, turning to the Twenty-third Psalm.
“This is exactly where it does start, Dre. Close your eyes and just listen and feel. Don't question. Just listen. Okay?”
Dre nodded, even though he was starting to feel somewhat foolish. He had always told Souljah Boy not to do this, to live in the real world; now he was listening because he suddenly didn't know what was real anymore. His world as he had known it was gone.
So what was there?
He realized he didn't know. Which meant he had nothing to lose by listening. Besides, Dre had always known there was something special about Souljah Boy, that he was different.
He didn't know what it was exactly, but he knew that Souljah Boy was connected in a different way from the rest of them. Maybe whatever looked over Souljah Boy, whatever resided with him, would protect Dre and his family, too.
What was left of it. After all, Souljah Boy, as far back as he could remember, had always been a part of his family.
Definitely there was something that was moving with him. It always had been. Dre had just never accepted it or really looked at it, was all.
“Okay,” he agreed, closing his eyes. “Go ahead and read, Souljah.”
“ âThe Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Amen.' ”
Souljah Boy finished reading the scripture.
As Dre listened to the reading with his eyes shut tight, images had appeared before him. He had heard the words differently. The word “application” had sounded in his mind as though on the wings of the wind.
Application.
He would have to apply those words to what was happening.
He opened his eyes. “I was wrong, wasn't I, Souljah? I said Harlem wasn't the valley of death. I said, âThis is Harlem, not the valley of death.' But I was wrong wasn't I? Harlem
is
the valley of death.”
“In Harlem, Dre, is both death and life for us and our people. Believe that.”
Dre couldn't stop himself. He was waterlogged. He would have been embarrassed if his life weren't in such tragic condition.
The tears slid from his eyes unabashedly.
And he had been so mean to Rashod the last time he had seen him, while he sat there drawing some stupid sketchâactually maybe not stupid, but definitely weird.
Dre regretted his attitude. He wished he could take it back and do it differently. But now he couldn't. Rashod was dead, too. Rashod was one of the images he had seen while his eyes were closed and Souljah Boy was reading from the Bible.
Souljah Boy rose from his seat. He laid the old Bible on a table. He hugged Dre. In that instant Dre felt the arms of many holding him, although all he saw was Souljah.
Souljah Boy released him and stood back. “Go home to Tracie, Dre. She needs you to come. She's at home now.”
Souljah Boy pulled Dre to his feet. Then he issued him a prophecy. “There are many more hurdles to overcome, Dre, but your family will survive. There is one who can save all. Have faith.”
With that, Souljah Boy showed Dre the door.
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Dre arrived home to find things just as Souljah Boy had said. Both Tracie and Michael were there. However, there had been no time for teary reunions, recriminations, or explanations.
The minute Dre had entered the house, Tracie, having received a phone call from Renee Santiago and having awakened from having exactly the same dream once again, had instantly declared to both Dre and Michael, “Come on. We have to go.”
From the tone in her voice and the look in her eyes, they had both known it was no time for questions.
And with that, Tracie Burlingame had fled the brownstone with her two remaining living sons in tow. They had left with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
She had managed to escape only moments before the police arrived.
The number one girlfriend, Renee Santiago, had delivered one high-placed favor. Not only had she put Tracie Burlingame up on what was going on and the fountain of blood that was spraying Harlem, she had also imparted some serious wisdom unto Tracie, which was good, because she would definitely need it.
Her parting words to Tracie were, “Have faith, girlfriend. Have faith.”