Push Comes to Shove (21 page)

“I’m just shooting my regular. Everything is everything and I’m with anything lucrative.”

“I take it it’s still on for tonight.”

“If your purse is right.”

“When have you known me not to come correct?” She leaned against the Escalade and watched a chocolate girl’s fat ass in a pair of Apple Bottoms jeans. Jewels tried to picture the jeans hitting her bedroom floor.

“After tonight, you’re no longer a petty hustler.”

“Take my new number and get at me if something changes before my graduation.”

“Daddy!” Secret ran at top speed and jumped into GP’s arms. She leaned over and kissed Kitchie’s cheek. “You and Mommy came to take us home.”

GP looked at the room’s entrance. “Where’s your brother?”

“He’s coming. So we’re going home with you and Mommy, right, Daddy?”

“Look at your hair.” Kitchie pried Secret from GP’s arms. “Come over here and sit down. Let me do something with this mess. Your father bought you a math book.”

“We’re not leaving, are we?” Secret’s hopes started to fizzle.

Kitchie took out a comb, brush, some barrettes, and hair grease from her purse. “Not today but soon.”

“Yeah, baby. Daddy promises to get y’all out of this place. I promise to—”

“Get me a bike, Secret a puppy…and new clothes.” Junior eased into a chair, six seats away, with his arms folded. “Mommy’s gonna get a big house. You always promise us stuff we never get. Secret, stop asking. We ain’t getting nothing and we ain’t going nowhere, just like everybody else here.” He stared at the wall to his left, avoiding looking in the direction of his family.

Kitchie turned her wounded eyes on GP, then began to get up.

He stopped her. “No, I need to. This is about me.” GP took in a deep breath, then sat beside Junior. “You have every reason to be upset with me. I’ve let you down.” He shifted his gaze between the three of them. “I’ve failed all of y’all several times, and I’m not proud of it. Junior, when I promise you something, I have every intention of making it happen. I try to make y’all as many promises as I can, so I work real hard to get it.”

“But we never get anything except the promise.” Junior swung his feet back and forth.

GP noticed Mr. Reynolds standing at the entrance. He could hear the voice shouting in his head.
You’re just another black whore baby who’ll never amount to nothing
. He clamped his eyelids, forcing Mr. Reynolds out. When he opened them again, Mr. Reynolds was doing a penguin walk down the narrow hall. “Listen to me,
Junior. I won’t make any more promises to any of y’all that I’m not prepared to deliver.”

Junior looked at GP for the first time. “Should I play pretend? You even break your own promises. You said that you’ll always protect us.”

“I will. You can count on that.”

“How can you protect us from Mr. Reynolds, and the rest of these mean people, if you’re at home and we’re here? Mommy, I wanna go back to my room.”

Night had come quicker than usual, at least that’s how Jewels felt about it as she eased the Escalade into the congested lot of the Improv Comedy Club. She spoke to her reflection in the rearview mirror. “Let’s get paid, girl.” She blew herself a kiss, then climbed from behind the steering wheel.

The door to the club opened and laughter poured out.

Jewels looked into the sky at the endless scatter of stars, and that’s when she was forced to see a few stars of her own.

“You don’t know? What the hell you mean, you don’t know what you’re gonna do?” Kitchie punched GP in the chest, then climbed through the window and sat on the fire escape.

He kneeled by the window. “Kitchie—”

“Kitchie my goddamn ass.” She rattled off a few more cruddy sentences in Spanish. “Our children have been taken from us. They don’t want to be there, and I sure as hell don’t want them in that place. And all the fuck you can come up with is
you don’t know
.”

“Take that shit back in the house! You blowing the spot up with your loud-ass mouth!” a hustler yelled from the parking lot below.

“Kiss my ass, panocha!” Kitchie held up a middle finger.

“Come inside,” GP said.

“I don’t feel like being bothered with nothing or nobody but this breeze.”

“I said, get your ass in here.”

“When I—”

“Now, dammit! I’m tired of your bullshit!”

Kitchie understood that he meant business.

He stepped aside and helped her through the window.

“You’re worried about me cussing out some punk. Your concern should be focused on the anger your son has built up toward you. He doesn’t even respect you anymore. The sad part is I don’t blame him.”

Her words cut through GP. He drew his hand back to slap her with all of his might.

“So that’s what it is now, GP? You’re gonna hit me, motherfucker? Go ahead, go on, kick my ass real good because you’re only gonna get one chance to do it. I hope you’re real satisfied with the outcome.”

He looked at his hand, fingers spread wide, and lowered it in guilt.

“Ten years, GP; ten years. I’ve let you drag me and my kids through every shit hole in this city. I supported you in everything and gave up a career to help you skip down your dead-end, yellow brick road.” A tear rolled off her cheek. “If you ever, I mean ever put your goddamn hands on me, you’ll lose me faster than you’re losing your son.”

This time when she went out to the fire escape, she shut the window behind her and walked down to the parking lot.

“Hey, Little Mama, mind if I conversate with you for a few?”

Kitchie inspected the handsome, rugged hustler from head-to-toe. She hoped GP was watching from the window above. “What are we talking about, stranger?”

“I’m Desmond.” He offered a hand.

“I’m—”

“Kitchie, I already know. I guess that means we’re not strangers anymore.”

She withdrew her hand and raised a brow. “How’d you know my name?”

“Everybody knows who you are. The walls in these buildings are paper thin. You and your man…” He jerked his head toward GP in the window. “Y’all broadcast your business to the whole ’hood.”

“And this is what you wanted to talk to me about?”

You are so pretty
is what he wanted to say but knew it would be inappropriate. “Nah, ma, not at all. I just want you to know I feel your pain. Me and my little sister was shipped from group home to foster home until I said fuck that shit. We came a long way. Now I’m able to send her to college.” He pulled out a knot of money. “I hope this will help you and your man get them kids back.”

“I can’t take this.”

“Trust me, ma, it’s nothing. If I didn’t have it to give, I wouldn’t offer it. And as it stands, you don’t have the luxury of turning it down.”

“Kitchie, what the hell you think you’re doing?” GP howled into the night from the fire escape.

She rolled her eyes and turned back to Desmond. “Thank you. This is very kind of you.”

“I just wore them boots before, ma; that’s all. Don’t let your pride get in the way. If y’all need anything, I live in the apartment above Jewels.” He pointed to GP, who was coming across the grass. “I think you better go. It looks like your man is foaming at the mouth.”

Trouble tapped Dirty and pointed. “There goes that bitch right there.”

They both watched Jewels back the Escalade into a parking space.

“If this bitch buck at all, kill her.” Trouble eased out of the car with his weapon, then blended into the night.

Dirty followed.

Jewels climbed from behind the steering wheel and stepped into the excitement and energy of the Flats district’s nightlife. From forty yards away, she could hear people enjoying themselves and laughing it up inside the comedy club when the door swung open. She looked at the open sky and pondered on the stars’ beauty.

Trouble cocked back and crashed the butt of his gun against Jewels’ skull. “You ain’t so tough now, is you, bitch?”

The words never registered; Jewels was unconscious before she slammed into the asphalt. Her key ring slid a few feet away.

Dirty retrieved the keys.

In less than a minute, Dirty had searched the Escalade. “It’s not here.”

“Kiss my…fuck!” Trouble kicked a dent into a Hyundai, then cast his annoyed gaze on Jewels. He began to search her. “Whatever this bitch is made of, it’s heavy and solid. Help me turn her over.”

“Like she got a hundred grand on her.”

“We can tongue-wrestle later; help me turn this hoe over.”

They turned Jewels onto her back as the BlackBerry in her pocket began to ring.

Trouble lifted her shirt and saw the money belt strapped around her waist. “Pay day.”

“Goddamn, now that’s what I call a six-pack.” Dirty pointed to
her defined abs. “Her shit look better than them body-builders in the magazines.”

Trouble removed the money belt. “Muscle can’t help her now. Fuck this bitch.” He kicked her in the ear as hard as he had kicked the Hyundai, then walked away.

Jewels’s BlackBerry was begging to be answered.

Dirty froze in his tracks. “Where you going? The ride is this way.” He pointed.

Trouble never broke his stride. “We came to get paid, right?”

“We got it, let’s roll out.”

“Nah, you got it fucked up. It’s still some money waiting for us on the inside. You ain’t pussy, is you, chump?”

“Watch your mouth.”

“Let’s go get it, then.” Trouble turned in the direction of the comedy club.