Street Divas (4 page)

I swear to God this nigga could fuck up a wet dream. Now I ain't giving this nigga nothing. He can kiss my black ass and go find himself a chicken head. But hell. Even some cracked-out pussy is too good for his ass.

“What the hell is going on up here?” Drey asks, reaching over and mercifully turning down his fucked-up system.

A whole team of police cars with their blue strobes light up the whole damn street.

“Some nigga got capped,” Drey says, rubbernecking.

“That shit ain't new,” I say, bored. I hope this don't mean they're going to hold our asses up on this street all night. Just when I say that, I see two cops directing traffic to roll down alternate side streets.
Thank God.

Drey eases off the brake while his tailpipe coughs up some more smoke. That shit is drifting toward the front of the car now, completing my humiliation as people twist their faces and look over at us. Drey is not embarrassed. He's still too busy trying to peek past the yellow crime-scene tape to see if he can recognize the nigga being white-chalked.

“Is that nigga in a tux?”

That catches my attention. I pop up in my seat and try to get a good look myself. “I wonder who it is.”

Bang. Bang.

Drey and I jump. A cop standing to the side of the car glares at Drey. “Keep this polluting piece of shit moving!”

“Damn, man. Careful before you fuck up my ride,” Drey barks.

Both me and the cop give him an incredulous look. How can anybody fuck his shit up worse than it already is? This damn contraption looks and sounds like it has less than a mile before it just flat-out dies on our asses.

“I'm moving. I'm moving,” Drey says when it looks like the cop is going to hit the car again. “These goddamn pigs. I swear I can't stand their asses,” he complains, but finally heads off the main road.

I go back to ignoring his ass and wondering who's lying in the street. I don't know why, but Profit flashes in my head. Him and Ta'Shara took a big chance going to the prom together. It ain't like there were a whole lot of people happy to see them all hugged up tonight, and isn't this the route to the Peabody Hotel? There's a weird flutter in my gut. I grab my purse and dig out my cell phone.

“Who you calling?”

“None of your fucking business. Just drive.”

“Damn, girl. Your mouth . . .” Drey shakes his head. “Rude as fuck.”

“Whatever.” I hit Ta'Shara's cell and it seems like the muthafucka rings forever before I'm transferred to her voice mail. “Uh, yeah. Shara, this is E. Look, um, I'm sure you and your boy are kicking it and everything, but I, um, I just wanted to make sure that you two made it to the hotel all right.” I swivel around in my seat, trying to see past the yellow tape, but the shit is now out of view. “I'm probably trippin', but, um, there is some shit going down not too far from your hotel, and I just wanted to check in.” Now that I've put it out there, I kind of feel stupid. “Anyway, call me when you get this message.”

After disconnecting the call, I hold the phone and wait for the knots in my stomach to unwind.

They don't.

I dial her number again. This time I start chewing my nails as I listen to the phone ring again. “C'mon, c'mon. Pick up.”

Drey glances over at me. “What? You really think that shit back there has something to do with your girl?”

“God. I hope not.”

Twenty minutes later, Drey squints and then leans over his steering wheel. “What the fuck is that?”

I hear the beep signaling me to leave a message on Ta'Shara's phone again as I glance up to see what has caught Drey's attention. My mouth falls open, but I'm unable to speak as I see a slouched female, draped in a bloody robe, trembling and shaking as she half walks and half stumbles toward my house.

“Yo,” Drey says, pointing. “Ain't that your girl, Ta'Shara, right there?”

I
hate hospitals. I always have.

Besides being filled with a bunch of nosy muthafuckas who press you for the who, what, and why of shit, they're also greedy as fuck. All they want to know is how they gonna get paid. No money and they'll slap Band-Aids on your bullet holes and park your ass in the morgue when you finish bleeding out. I fail to see how their hustle is any different than the niggas out on the street.

Frankly, I would have liked nothing more than to take another trip out to Dr. Cleveland's private residence, but the amount of bullet holes Profit has is going to require a real operating table. Under normal circumstances, our asses would have done a drop-and-roll outside the emergency room to avoid playing twenty questions.

But Profit isn't a normal foot soldier. He's Mason's brother. His heart. There's nothing that he won't do for this lil nigga. With Profit being all fresh and new in the Vice Lord family, he hasn't been able to make a name for himself yet, but what most niggas do know about him is that he has fuckin' heart. The way he fought in his initiation fight is still being talked about among plenty of niggas up and down the ranks. No matter how hard Tombstone threw those punches, Profit refused to go down. And now he's looking like Swiss cheese and is still breathing? If he does survive this shit, he's going to have to change his street name from Profit to Jesus Christ because the brothah refuses to die.

The minute we pull up outside the emergency room, we shout that we need help. Two paramedics who are heading back toward a parked ambulance stop in their tracks while an old flashlight cop posted at the entrance glances over timidly. Not until we shove the hatch up and reveal Profit's bullet-riddled body do they all launch into action.

“What happened?” one of them asks.

“What does it look like?” I snap, and then glance to my side to see my brother giving me one of those looks that says
I told you so
. He was in favor of the drop-and-roll solution.

“Did you see what happened?” one of the paramedics presses as he helps transfer Profit onto a gurney.

“No.”

“We have a pulse,” the other paramedic announces.

My shoulders slump heavily. At least Profit didn't croak while he was under my care. We all take off into the hospital where an impressive number of people rush toward the gurney. IV bags, needles, nurses, and doctors pop up out of thin air. They all move in a weird, frenzied precision like they do on TV.

I stop jogging behind the gurney once they push through a double door, leading toward surgery. After that, I suck in a couple of deep breaths to calm my rattled nerves. This shit is in God's hands now. But as I stand, watching the swinging doors, a memory stirs. Just snatches at first. I was almost eight years old, standing in a hospital hallway just like this one while my mother wailed to Jesus not to let my father die on us. I knew that he was already gone. I had seen that light in his eyes vanish. Bishop cried, too, but not all hysterical like our Momma. His tears were silent as they rolled down his chubby face.

My eyes were as dry as a desert.

Maybe I was still in shock. My dad had been standing outside in our driveway, guzzling down his after-dinner beer and jaw-jacking with Cousin Skeet and Cousin Smokestack. They were brothers, but they weren't really our cousins; people just call each other that in our set....

 

 

It was dark outside. The streetlight was already on, but I could hear deep baritones talking out in the driveway. I pushed open the screen and stepped out onto the porch. “Daddy?”

My dad turned toward the door while blowing out a long stream of smoke. Momma didn't like it when he puffed on those funny-smelling things that stunk up the whole house. “Yeah, what is it, Willow?”

I rushed down the stairs and then jogged over to hug his trim waist. That was my way of saying that I really didn't need anything, but I wanted to be around him.

“Well, aren't you a pretty young thing?” Cousin Smokestack said, glancing down at me. I was still dressed in my favorite yellow Sunday dress that I'd worn to evening service. I was supposed to have taken it off when we got back; Momma warned that she was going to beat me into the middle of next week if I got it dirty. But I wasn't worried about that, because I liked how the bottom flared out when I swung from side to side. Plus my father always said that I look like a yellow lily—his favorite spring flower. I suspected that he knew a lot about flowers, because my mom and grandmother spent hours in their gardens.

“What do you say, Willow?” my father asked.

He shook his leg to try and get me to answer, but my gaze dropped to my white leather shoes. I used to love how they clacked when I walked around. I'd pretend for hours that I could actually tap dance despite my brother complaining about all the racket I made.

“Willow,” my dad pressed. “What do you say?”

“Thank you.” I twirled my dress and hid my reddening face against my father's leg. I don't know why I was painfully shy when it came to compliments. I loved getting them, especially from Cousin Smokestack. He was nice-looking. I'd even heard my mom and Aunt Nicky say so in the kitchen one time. Hell, he knew he had it going on. He was real tall and had smooth honey-brown skin, big dimples on both sides of his face, and what most of us called “good hair.”

Cousin Smokestack tossed me a wink. “You got yourself a heartbreaker right there.”

“Sheeeiiit,” my daddy swore. “These nappy-headed niggas better not come around here sniffing with their dicks out. I got something for they asses.” He tapped at something on the other side of his hip that caused Smokestack's dimples to deepen when he laughed. I couldn't help but smile, too. He had that kind of effect on people.

Cousin Skeet nodded along, too. “I feel you. I wanted a boy my damn self.”

I frowned up at him, but he tried to patch things over by smiling back. “No offense.”

I rolled my eyes. Cousin Skeet wasn't one of my favorite people, though he seemed very popular. Maybe it was just me, but there was something about his eyes. They shifted a lot like he was always thinking bad thoughts. He wasn't as tall as my daddy and Smokestack and didn't have as many muscles, but he still came across as a strong person. Someone not to fuck with, my daddy would say.

Dad was in a good mood, because he didn't order me to go back into the house so that grown men could discuss business. For the longest time, I literally thought that my father made paper—like the kind we wrote on at school—because that was what he'd say all the time, but I finally caught on. “Yo, man. I'm about to go make this paper” or “I'm hustlin' for this paper.”

This evening, I was trying to keep up with what they're talking about, but it was all gibberish to me—except when they started cussing. Muthafucka this, grimy punk-bitch that. I thought that shit was funny and used it on my brother, Juvon, whenever he pissed me off, which was often.

“So how things going with J.D.?” my father asked, pulling another drag on his funny-smelling cigarette.

“Humph!” Smokestack rolled his eyes before tilting back his forty.

My dad laughed. “That good, huh?”

“Look, J.D. is J.D.: a fuckup of the highest order. But what can I do? He's blood, nahwhatImean?”

“I hear what you saying.” Daddy shrugged. “Everybody has at least one fuckup in the family.” He looked over at Cousin Skeet and cheesed.

“Ha-ha. You ain't funny, muthafucka.” Skeet rolled his eyes.

“I call it like I see it,” Dad said.

There was more laughter before my dad asked, “So he's still in rehab?”

Smokestack shook his head. “Nope. He got locked up over in Tupelo for knocking over a gas station out by the casinos. Dumb fuck got away but then remembered that he wanted to get some rolling paper and went back. Damn police was there taking the robbery report when he returned. Nigga behind the counter looked up, pointed, and said, ‘Hey, there he go right there.' J.D. had the nerve to get mad and started scream in ' that snitches get stitches.”

Daddy and Cousin Skeet dropped and shook their heads. They did that a lot when they were talking about Smokestack's youngest brother. Of course, I've never met him. At least I don't remember ever meeting him. Momma said that he wasn't allowed to come around our house because he was too much trouble—or he was always in trouble. I couldn't remember which.

They continued talking about J.D. being a fuckup until Mom came to the front screen door. “Darcell, have you seen—Willow, child, get your butt in here and take off your good church dress.” She opened the door and stared at me.

I hugged my dad tighter.

“Go on and do what your momma told you,” my dad scolded, shaking his leg as a hint for me to let go.

I poked out my bottom lip and then hung my head lower.

“Evening, Lucille,” Skeet called out to my momma.

She flashed him a small smile but then turned her attention back to me. “Giiiiirrrrl, if you don't get your narrow behind up in here, we're about to have a problem,” Momma said, jabbing a hand onto her hip. “And pick up your lip before you trip over it.”

Reluctantly, I released my father's leg but kept my head down and my bottom lip damn near on the ground. The men laughed as I dragged my feet toward the house. I made it halfway to the porch when the sound of screeching tires caught my ear.

“Who the fuck is these muthafuckas?” Smokestack asked.

Nosy, I turned around. A series of what sounded like firecrackers went off, and my dad fell to the ground while everyone else dove for cover.

Except for me.

I stood there in my favorite yellow dress, now sprayed with my father's blood, trying to process what had just happened and staring into my father's eyes and watching this strange light dim.

“SIX POPPIN', FIVE DROP PIN', NIGGAS,” some boy shouted from the black car as it peeled down Ruby Cove.

Momma raced out of the house screaming, “DARCELL! OH, GOD, NO!”

From behind my father's bright red hoopty, Smokestack came up shooting at the fleeing car. “GRIMY, PUNK-ASS MUTHAFUCKAS!”

POW! POW! POW!

“DARCELL,” Momma wailed as she rolled my dad over.

Cousin Skeet dropped down next to Momma and tried to pull her into his embrace for comfort, but she didn't
't
want anything to do with that and shoved him away from her.

I looked down at the ground and saw the odd angle at which my father lay. It looked painful, and I couldn't figure out why he wouldn't try to get up.

Smokestack kept shooting. POW! POW! POW!

It was useless. Those boys covered in blue were gone.

Time warped. I don't remember how long it took for my brother to race outside or who called the ambulance or even how we got to the hospital. I remembered standing in the hallway, watching the doctors and nurses rush my father through the hospital's double doors.

 

 

I turn away from the doors and the sad memories in time to see the flashlight cop mumbling and pointing two police officers in my direction.
Here we go.

“Excuse me, miss. But were you the one who brought in the gunshot victim?”

He makes it sound like there was just one bullet.
I want to go ahead and throw up the first brick wall, but their opening question isn't one I can just lie about. “Yeah,” I say, folding my arms.

One cop, who looks like he's fresh off the boat from Africa, whips out his pen and notepad while the other one, a salt-and-pepper Italian, folds his arms and matches my stance. “You want to tell us what happened?”

“Don't know,” I tell them. “I found him out on O'Donnell's and then brought him here.”

“You
found
him?” Africa asks, lifting a brow.

“Yeah. He was crumpled up in front of an abandoned building. I stopped, realized that I knew him, and brought him here. I didn't see what happened.”

The odd couple cut their eyes toward each other and shared a look that clearly said,
Niggas.
Next, they fire one question after another, but I stick to my story, which happens to be the truth this time around.

When I get through wasting time with Dumb and Dumber, I drift over to the waiting room with Bishop, Tombstone, Silk, and Gully.

“You think Lil Man is going to pull through?” Bishop asks, looking worried.

“Who knows?” I've never been one to give niggas false hope. “Did you call Fat Ace?”

Bishop shakes his head. “He's not answering his phone.”

“Fuck.” I dig my cell out of my pocket.

“Who are you calling?” Bishop asks.

“Who the fuck do you think?”

“But I told you—”

I signal for him to shut the fuck up when the call is transferred to voice mail. “Yo, man. Where the fuck you at? You need to get your dick out of that cop's pussy and head on over to the hospital,” I blast into the phone. “Profit has been shot up pretty bad and . . . fuck, man, I don't know if he's going to make it. Hit me back on my cell when you get this message. I'm out.” I disconnect the call and shove the phone into my pocket. “If he doesn't call me back in ten minutes, I'm riding out to that fake bitch's crib and snatching his ass out from between her legs my damn self.”