Gangsta Divas (24 page)

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Authors: De'nesha Diamond

BOOK: Gangsta Divas
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37
Lucifer
T
he mortician snatches the white sheet from Bishop's head.At my side, Momma releases a gut-wrenching wail that twists my gut into knots. I force steel into my back while I clamp my jaw tight, all in a desperate attempt to stop the unthinkable.
Don't cry. Don't. You. Fuckin'. Do. It.
I can't believe that I even have to say this shit to myself—but life is dealing me too many body blows and I'm seconds from giving in.
My mother, on the other hand, loses it. She jets from my side and throws herself across Bishop's cold, dead body. I should pull her back, but I know that she'll fight me off so I let her have her moment. In my absence, the mortician steps forward and before he can even touch my mother, I pull him back and shake my head.
“I'll give you two a few minutes,” he says.
I keep my glare leveled on him until he exits the room. Even then, I cling onto my anger as if it's going to save me from drowning in an ocean of unwanted emotions.
Too many emotions.
“My baby. My baby. Whhhhyyyy?” Momma's sobs grow so loud that my ears ring. How long should I let her do this to herself—five minutes—ten minutes? Momma had changed a lot over the years. Her once-fit frame is now ringed with love handles and breasts giving in to the pressure of gravity. And though her beautiful caramel skin is still wrinkle-free, there's a permanent sadness in her eyes. Momma has never been anybody's fool, she knew Bishop and I followed our father's path into the street.
Of course, she preferred I'd taken my place among the Flowers instead of getting involved with the wet work. But she was old-school, when women just married the game—not played it. Momma and I never saw eye to eye on much, especially after she crawled into bed with Cousin Skeet so soon after Daddy's death. And with my own situation after Mason's death, I understand it even less now.
Unless there was something going on between them before Daddy was killed.
I shake my head to erase the thought, but it's not like my head is an Etch A Sketch. This thought has been circling for more than a decade and each time it does, I hate her even more for it.
Closing my eyes, I hang my head. Today is not the day for this shit.
Juvon is dead.
I flinch from the stabbing pain in my heart. As a line of defense, I shift my gaze to the floor and pretend to be fascinated by how clean the white linoleum looks. Slowly, my eyes crawl upward.
Don't look him. Don't. Do. It.
I can keep it together if I don't look at him. But my eyes have a mind of their own and they keep traveling his body until they land on Juvon's sunken gray-black face and the huge hole in his right temple.
Dammit, Bishop. Why did you have to go and get yourself killed?
My hands ball at my sides. Maybe if I'd been at Da Club that night then none of this would have happened.
I don't know if that shit is true, but the thought keeps creeping around in my mind. With new rumors swirling around that Python and LeShelle had somehow survived that hit outside the church, it's just one more hard blow that I have to deal with. It's hard to believe that twenty-four hours ago, I was worried about a tag-team alliance between him and Profit. Now, if I could turn back time, I would gladly step down and give him the damn throne.
But I've been wishing for a fucking time machine for the past few months.
Fifteen minutes pass and Momma's wails grow louder. Finally, I step forward and settle my hands on her shoulders. “C'mon, Momma. Let's go.”
“No. No. I can't leave him like this,” she sobs, fighting me off. “I can't leave him alone.”
I close my eyes and step back and watch her do what she has to do. An hour later, Momma finally releases him, weak and exhausted. When I start to lead her out of the room, she grabs my arm and forces me to look at her.
“You find out who did this shit to your brother.” Her fingers dig into my skin. “I know that you have ways of finding out.You do it.You hear me?” Momma's jaw trembles with renewed anger. “You kill those muthafuckas who did this shit to my baby.”
I swallow the boulder in the center of my throat as I nod. “I will.”
“Promise me,” she insists, her nails damn near hitting bone. “I want them dead—every last one of those muthafuckas.”
At long last, something we see eye to eye on. “You have my word, Momma.”
38
Alice
A
rzell smells bad. I keep telling myself that I need to clean up what came out of his dead body and drag him out to one of the freshly dug graves I have prepared by the big oak tree, but so far I keep putting it off. Maybe it's because it feels like a form of punishment to deny him his final resting place. Maybe I'll leave Maybelline to rot in the basement, too, once she croaks.
I know she has to be begging God by now for me to just put a bullet through her head. So far, I do just enough to keep her alive. I'll never get over losing my baby
or
his daddy. . . .
 
It had been almost five years since I'd left Terrell at Maybelline's to run to the store and there hadn't been a day that passed that I didn't contemplate going back, but I had a list as long as my arm on why that shit was a bad idea. Every year on his birthday I sent him a birthday card to let him know that I was thinking about him. It was probably stupid. It wasn't like Terrell could read.
“Just go and visit him,” Dribbles said in between shoving handfuls of catfish into her mouth. It was one of those rare days when we'd hustled a few extra dollars to put some actual food in our bellies. “You know that you want to. I'm sure that your sister will let you see him.”
“Not without giving me a hard time or . . .”
Dribbles frowned and licked her fingers. “Or what?”
I shrugged. “I don't know. You don't know Maybelline. She got this whole holier than thou thing down pat. I'm surprised that no one has nailed her to a cross already.”
“Hell, there's one of those in every family,” Dribbles laughed. “All I'm saying is it's clear that you want to see Terrell so . . . go see him.”
I grabbed my cola and wished that it had something stronger in it so I could handle this conversation.
“You scared she's gonna pack Terrell's things and make you take him with you?”
“No,” I lied.“And even if she did, it's not like I couldn't take care of him. I mean . . . it would be a little adjustment, but I could do it. If I had to.”
Dribbles nodded and let me bump my gums. She wasn't buying a word I was saying. When I finished, she had one response: “Go.”
Two days after Terrell's fifth birthday I knocked on Maybelline's doors. After I did, I was suddenly hit with the feeling that I was making a terrible mistake. I turned to jet off the porch when the front door was opened.
“What can I do you for?”
I whipped back around at the rough baritone voice and was taken aback by the thuggishly fine, bold, chocolate brother filling up the door. To make things worse, he was bare-chested with a tapestry of tats, a gold rope chain and wore jeans that sagged off his hips.
Black Gangster Disciple Isaac Goodson was a mean muthafucka by the way of Chicago—at least that was the word on the streets. When he rolled into town and opened his own auto shop off Airways, bitches streamed in and out of that place tryna lock his fine ass down. I had heard that Maybelline had been the lucky bitch to drag him down to the courthouse but until that moment I hadn't realize just how lucky she was.
“Are you going to stand here with your mouth open all day or are you going to tell me what you want?”
Licking my dry lips, I straightened my clothes and hand-ironed my hair. “Is . . . is Maybelline and Terrell in?”
“Nah. She took lil man down South to visit family.” Isaac propped his weight against the door frame and took his time checking me over. “You're Alice, aren't you?”
Surprised, I blinked up at him. I couldn't imagine Maybelline having had anything nice to say about me. “Yeah. I just came by to, uhm, wish Terrell a happy birthday.”
“For the past five birthdays?”
“Hey!You don't know me.” The brothah jumped from my fantasy list to shit list with a quickness.
“No—but I know your son. And I know that he would like to see his mother every once and a while.”
“I'm here, ain't I?”
“And he's not. That's what some would call a logistical problem.” He toked on a fat blunt and stared at me. Despite my addiction and homeless situation, I still had quite an effect on the opposite sex and I knew when a man was interested in me. Flipping the script, I checked his ass out, too. My jealousy mounted when my gaze rested on the growing dick imprint in the front of his jeans.
“Soooo how long are they gonna be gone?” I asked, pushing up a smile.
“They'll be back on Monday.” He blew out a long stream of smoke. “Wanna come in and wait?”
“For three days?”
“You got something else to do?”
I smiled. “As a matter of fact, I don't.”
Isaac stepped back and allowed me to enter.
The next three days had to be the best sex that I've ever had. When we weren't screwing, we were blazing it up and vice versa. It was wrong to be fuckin' Maybelline's husband in her bed but it was even worse to fall in love with him. I couldn't help myself. Isaac was as addictive as the best rocks on the street. When the time drew nearer for Maybelline and Terrell to return, I had a new reason to not want to face her.
So I left.
Isaac and I fucked a few more times in his office at his shop, but then he just cut me off. It wasn't because he suddenly had a conscience. He had simply moved on to the next bitch. I know because I stalked his ass.
“Fuck him. I don't give a fuck about that muthafucka.” I flicked on my lighter and rotated it beneath the spoon of cocaine and baking soda. “I hope his ass catches something and his dick falls off.”
“You keep saying that,” Dribbles said, twitching and rubbing her arms. “Hurry up with that.”
“I mean it. Who the fuck does he think he is? Humph. I like his nerve. He ain't the only nigga out here. I can get any muthafucka I want, if I put my mind to it. Sheeiiiiit.” I put the lighter down and then worked the oil with a knife.
“Yeah. Well, whatever you do, don't go crawling back to Skeet's crazy self. He don't do nothing but beat your ass anyway.”
“He ain't beating nobody's ass. I don't know where you get that shit from.”
“From Smokestack. Plus, I got two eyes. He beats on all us street bitches but then puts his wife on a fuckin' pedestal.”
“Smokestack needs to get out of my business. He's always talking that black militant shit while tryna crawl up your ass. No offense.”
“None taken. But just because I'm white doesn't mean that I can't be down for the black cause.”
I laughed. “That's exactly what it means.”
“Whatever, girl. What about Terrell? When are you going to try and see him again?”
The question dropped a mountain of guilt on my shoulder. “I'ma see him.” One day.
Dribbles shook her head. “Whatever, girl. I gotta piss.” She stood up and went into the bathroom. By the time she returned, I'd already thrown a couple of rocks into the pipe and was coasting through the clouds.
“Alice, what the hell is this?”
I heard her, but I couldn't open my eyes.
“Alice!”
“Whaaaat?”
“Whose pregnancy test is this?” she demanded.
“Fuck. Who do you think? It's my room.”
“You're pregnant?”
“Shit, naw. That muthafucka gotta be wrong. I'll pick up another one tomorrow.”
“Girl, these things are pretty accurate. Why the fuck are you smoking if you're pregnant?”
“Ah, shit. Don't you start in on me.” I blindly reached over and snatched the test out of her hands. “If I wanted a sermon I'd take my ass to church.”
“Well, whose it? Isaac's or Skeet's?”
“Why? What difference does it make? We already know that Melvin ain't gonna lay claim to nothing that doesn't come out of his bougie wife's pussy. Besides, I ain't messed with him in a minute.”
“So it's Isaac's?”
“Fuck him,” I blurted out again. “Maybelline deserves his cheating ass,” I said, pretending that I was more mad than hurt.
Dribbles plopped down next to me and grabbed the pipe. While I drifted among the clouds, Isaac's fine ass kept interrupting my thoughts. I knew that he wasn't mine, but I couldn't stand the thought of Maybelline having him. I snuck over to Maybelline's a few times and even watched Terrell play with the neighborhood kids, but I was more interested in Isaac as he worked the shop, hustled his corners, and inducted brothas into the Folks Nation. I never once drew up enough courage to ring Maybelline's doorbell again.
What did it say about me that I wanted my sister's man more than I wanted Terrell back?
I thought about going to the clinic and getting rid of his baby. I feared Isaac's response would be like Melvin's when I told him about the pregnancy. Eventually, I caved and went to see him at Goodson's Auto Shop soon after entering my second trimester and handed him the four-month-old pregnancy test.
“What the fuck are you giving me this shit for?” he asked, waving the stick around.
“Why do you think?”
Isaac's expression remained stony as he closed his office door and walked around me to take a seat behind the desk. “You need some money and a ride to the clinic?”
I flinched. He didn't even blink on that shit. “I'm keeping it.”
His head rocked back with his burst of laughter. “And then do what? Drop it off at my crib for me and Maybelline to raise like your other boy?”
“No. I can raise this baby. We can raise the baby.”
“We?” He laughs. “That ain't my baby.”
“Muthafucka, you know how babies are made. I ain't been messing with nobody but you since we first hooked up.”
“Sheeeiiit. You need to get the hell on with that. That can be anybody's baby. I've heard all about how you hustle for them rocks—and we ain't fucked in months.”
“I know. I'm four months pregnant,” I barked.
“So? You're a ho and you were a ho four months ago. That doesn't make that seed mine.”
“Fuck you! I know that this is your baby and I'm keeping it!” Silly me, I held a small nugget of hope that he'd want this child. After all, he had no problem raising Terrell as his own. Shit. I could take Terrell back and we could raise both kids together. I was probably a better mother than Maybelline.
Isaac sucked in a deep breath and took a moment to calm down. “Okay. Let's slow this down. I can't do this with you. You gonna have to handle that.”
“Why not?”
“I'm married—to your sister.”
“Did you forget that while you were fucking me in her bed?” I snapped. “Maybe I should go over there and have a little talk with Sister Dearest and let her know that she has been sleeping in my wet spot.”
Isaac bolted out of the chair. I went for the door, but before I knew it I was jacked up against the wall with his hands wrapped around my throat.
Scared shitless, I clawed at his hand, trying to get air.
“You're not going to tell Peaches a damn thing. You hear me? I'm not about to let you fuck that shit up. Hear me?”
He rammed my head back against the wall. Stars exploded behind my eyes while I fought for oxygen.
“If you ever even fix your mouth to tell Peaches anything about this right here, I'll personally give you a muthafuckin' abortion. You feel me?”
I tried to answer but I couldn't get anything out. Isaac slammed my head one last time and then released me. I collapsed to the floor, gasping. Once I dragged in enough air, I grabbed his leg. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I just wanted us to be together.” I clawed my way up and tried to unzip his pants. “Here, baby. Let me make you feel good. You know I can make you feel good again.” I unzipped him and tried to whip out his dick.

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