Street Divas (16 page)

M
ason looks fucked up.

By the time Dr. Cleveland had finished digging and stitching our leader up, there were eight bloody bullets sitting in the bottom of a silver pan. I had hoped by the time I returned today to check on Mason that he would've had a hell of a lot more color than he's showing right now—or at least be awake. My disappointment must show on my face because Bishop takes one look at me and then walks over to try and relieve my fears.

“He's going to be all right,” Bishop says, curling up a half smile. “This nigga is like the Teflon Don. You ought to know that shit better than anybody.”

I reluctantly pull my gaze away from Mason's still form to look my brother dead in the eye. “Maybe.”

“I'm betting every dime I got on it.” He throws a light punch against my shoulder. “Now cheer the fuck up before you get all mushy on my ass.”

I roll my eyes. “You wish.”

“Yeah. Probably. The day your ass sheds a tear, it will likely usher in those ‘end of days' that Momma preaches about.”

“Ha-ha.”

“So what did you find out down at the hospital? Profit awake yet?”

“Nah.” I shake my head. “Doctors down there don't sound too fucking optimistic about his ass waking up anytime soon either. Hell, they're still trying to figure out how the muthafucka is still breathing.”

Bishop laughs. “It's because him and our nigga here got the same blood rushing through their veins.”

“Did the doctor say how long it would be before Mason wakes up?”

“Could be any minute.”

“And it could be never,” I inject pessimistically. Fuck. I can't help it. It's who the fuck I am. Life has never given me much to be optimistic about.

Bishop twists his face up at me. “I done told you my man is going to pull through this shit, so squash it.”

I toss up my hands and back the hell up. I can tell by looking at him that he doesn't even want to consider the possibility of us losing our boy. That shit is odd, given the nature of our business. Niggas fall every day—and there's always another nigga to take their place. It's the cycle of the street life. There's no pension or retirement plans out here. We live by a bullet and the odds are we're gonna die beneath a hail of them. The only questions are, when, and are we going to have the guts to hold our heads up?

Right now, I'm uncomfortable about how still and colorless Fat Ace is. It's too easy to picture his ass lying in a casket like so many other street soldiers before him—my daddy included . . .

Three days after my father was gunned down in our front yard, Momma, Juvon, and I stood huddled together under a lone umbrella while one sobbing person after another stood in front of the closed black and chrome casket and told how my father, the Dough Man, as they called him, either helped pay a light bill or put food on the table when a soldier was either dead or serving a bid. My father was a great man, they said over and over again. The newspapers had it wrong.

“A gangsta? A drug lord? A criminal?” Smokestack thundered in a rising baritone. “These are labels society tries to shackle us with every day. The white man ain't happy unless he keeps us chained down. And trust and believe that it's by any means possible.”

A chorus of agreement ensued, despite the few nervous glances we made toward a line of police officers who also stood watch. Momma said they were there for additional police protection, but we trusted the police about as much as we trusted the Gangster Disciples.

“Darcell Washington was the very definition of a man. He was a husband, a father, a brother, and a son. Above all that, he was a good lieutenant with the Peoples Nation. He was a friend when you needed a friend. A brother when you needed a brother.”

There was a small ring of “amens” while I sucked in a deep breath and wished that this whole thing would be over soon, but Smokestack was just getting started.

“All I'm saying is that the world outside has forfeited their rights to judge us—how we put food on our table, how we keep the lights on, or how we look out for one another.”

“Aww, this nigga gonna start preachin' now,” someone said from behind us.

“Well all right now!” Aunt Nicky held up her right hand to Jesus and started waving it around.

Smokestack smiled. “It's important now more than ever that we who have been blessed into the Nation have to stick together and hold the line—even against brothers and sisters who look like us but want to snatch the food out of our mouths—out of your baby's mouth. Those slobs shed Darcell's blood in front of his house—in front of his children.” He gestured toward me and Juvon.

I dropped my head lower and prayed that he'd hurry the hell up. I don't want to stand out here all damn day in the rain. I twisted around to see who all came, and it looked like the whole Vice Lord family turned out. I guess I should feel good about that, but so far I still feel nothing. I don't
't
know what it is, but I feel like a huge part of me died when the lights went out of my daddy's eyes.

For the past twenty-four hours, everyone kept telling me that it's okay for me to grieve—like I was waiting around for permission or something. Frankly, all the waterworks was rocking my nerves. All those fucking tears weren't
't
going to suddenly help my daddy rise up from the dead. If they could, then maybe I would've managed to squeeze a few. Meanwhile, it seemed that everyone was putting on a show and I was waiting for the credits to roll.

I started to turn back around when my gaze cut across to Mason Lewis. At first I'm stunned to see him in something other than saggy jeans, a fresh white T, and the latest pair of Jordans he done jacked from the mall. Barely nine years old, the chubby hustler was already a menace to society.

After staring at him for so long, he bucked his head back in his signature, “ 'sup, B?” greeting.

For the first time in three days, I actually felt something. There was a tightening in my chest, a flutter in my stomach—but that was the usual when Mason came around. Now, it bothered me that I could still feel that but could feel nothing for the man I've loved my whole life, lying in a cushioned casket.

Maybe there really was something wrong with me. I turned back and faced Smokestack.

“We all know who sanctioned this shit—and you got my word that the Black Gangster Disciples are going to feel the heat of my nine, especially that head nigga, King Isaac.” His top lip curled in disgust. “Time to knock that nigga off his make-believe throne. Y'all feel me?”

There was a roar of agreement, and a few niggas even lifted their guns in the air as if somehow asking the good Lord to bless their piece.

But it was Aunt Nicky who hollered out the loudest and waved her hand in the air. “Amen, amen.”

She wasn't fooling nobody. While everybody else in the family was dressed in black, she was standing next to Momma in a red dress so tight that no one understood how she could even breathe in the damn thing. That was Aunt Nicky—always on the hunt for a new man. Sometimes when she couldn't find an available one, she borrowed someone else's. Judging by the way she was looking at Smokestack, he was her next target.

Fuck his white girl, Barbara.

It was funny that for all of Smokestack's militant talk, he always had this white bitch sniffing shit out of the crack of his ass. At least that's how my momma put it every time she saw the blue-eyed junkie.

The kids around the block called his wifey Dribbles—mainly because most of the time she was huddled in the back of someone's house or gas station with a dirty needle in her arm, her head held back while a long string of spittle dribbled out the corner of her mouth. When she was like that, it was just a matter of time before a bunch of niggas came around and started putting they hands all up her skirt. Once I even saw her put her mouth on this man's
's
dirty dick outside in broad daylight, but then she got mad when he took off running instead of letting her hold five dollars. She raised so much hell out there, screaming and cursing his ass out that I gave her five dollars out of my allowance to shut her the hell up.

Mason always got mad and embarrassed when that shit got back to him, seeing how she was his momma and all. Now, nobody really believed her lily-white ass was his real momma.

Around here, we may point and whisper, but for the most part we minded our own damn business. Besides, not too many niggas even knew or met they damn daddies, so if any nigga wanted to lay claim, we figured you should consider your ass lucky. Now I didn't have a damn daddy.

I pulled my gaze away from Dribbles and swung it toward Cousin Skeet. It was hard for me to stop my lip from curling in disgust. Now more than ever, he had his gaze locked on my momma's ass throughout this ceremony. He must've felt the weight of my stare or something because he at long last shifted his gaze in my direction. When he smiled, I cut my eyes away and returned my attention back to Smokestack.

Twenty minutes later, he stuck a cork in it and we walked back up to the closed casket to say our final good-byes. As we marched forward, I saw tears gathering in Juvon's eyes again, and I almost wanted to sock him in the face and tell him to cut that shit out. Real niggas don't cry.

Period.

Marching up behind Juvon and Momma, I copied Smokestack's smooth, confident walk, kissed two fingers, and then pressed them in between the blanket of flowers Momma dug out of her garden. I stopped for a moment and waited to feel something. I wanted to. Believe that. But it never happened.

When we all returned home, the sun had come out and there was a huge feast and even more people waiting for us. That was when I knew that this was probably going to be one of the longest days of my life. What made people think that at a time like this, we really wanted their asses all up in our faces? It really didn't make no kind of sense when you got down to it. After like the hundredth person asked me how I was doing, I took my ass outside and plopped down on the back porch. At least today I knew Momma wasn't going to give me no shit about messing up my dress. In fact, this was going to be the last day I was going to wear one of these damn things. What was the point? I only wore them because my daddy liked them.

I had exactly two seconds of peace before the yard was suddenly filled with other kids. No doubt their selfish-ass parents sent them out here so they could get their loud asses out of their hair.

“Bang! Bang! Bang! Nigga, you's dead,” Andre shouted, using his hand as a gun.

“Nah-uh. Nigga, you missed me!” Dominic pulled the gold scarf off from around his face. “You know your ass can't shoot anyway.”

“I shoot better than you—you stank-breath, cross-eyed, Urkel wannabe,” Andre shot back.

Like a flash of lightning, another kid ran up behind Dominic and planted his two-finger gun in the back of his head and shouted, “POW!” And for an extra sneaky move, he swept his foot underneath Andre and then smirked when the stunned kid hit the ground hard and busted his top lip. “Now your ass is dead, muthafucka!”

My interest perked up at the unusual bass pouring out of a kid so small.

With so much blood gushing from Andre's lip, we all waited to see if his ass was going to start hollering like a baby or brush that shit off.

“Fuck!” Andre complained, and then spat out a mouthful of blood and dirt. “Fuck. Nigga, we weren't even playing with you.”

The kid kicked him square in his ass and made him eat another mouthful of dirt. “Don't you know what the fuck dead means, stupid muthafucka?”

That shit cracked me the fuck up, mainly because Andre wasn't used to someone putting their foot up his ass. Once I started laughing, I couldn't stop. It felt good to laugh, especially since I'd been surrounded by crying people for three days straight.

Andre's bully looked up and glared over at me. “What the fuck are you laughing at, bitch?”

I blinked at his rudeness, but then decided to match him attitude for attitude. “First of all, your momma is a bitch and I'm laughing at y'all fake-ass niggas playing paper gangstas. Shit. You'd probably piss in your pants if y'all was in any real do-or-die situation.”

This miscellaneous nigga scrunched up his face. “Who in the hell are you calling fake?”

Folding my arms, I swirled my neck around like my momma did whenever she got mad. “I'm looking at you, ain't I?” His punk-ass gaze raked me up and down, and I could see that he's debating on whether he'd fight a girl, so I tried to push his buttons some more. “Now what?” I asked. “Whatcha going to do about it?”

“Maybe I'll punch you in your damn mouth,” he said, strolling toward me and staring me down.

If he thought I was going to flinch or get up and run into the house all scared and shit, he had the wrong bitch for that shit. “Try it, nigga. There's plenty of time to squeeze in another funeral today.” To prove how bad I was, I thrust my chin up and dared his ass to swing. At this point, I'm thinking that it might feel good to hit something—or someone—right now. And this muthafucka was as good as the next.

“Nigga, you better walk away,” Mason said, stepping out of the house and shaking his head. “Trust me. You don't
't
want none of my girl Willow. The girl is a devil in a dress.” He chuckled.