Texts from Bennett (7 page)

Yeah, I’ll admit, I thought she was pretty cute.

They were immigrants from the ruins of Juba, a war-torn village in the southern region of the Sudan. Once they met and fell in love, they decided to elope and fled to Senegal to avoid the seemingly endless genocide that had devastated the Sudan for so long.

Edgard worked on a tobacco farm while Mariam was allegedly a coquette of some kind and entertained a couple of powerful Senegalese politicians to supplement an attractive amount of income. This particular part of the story is murky and is largely based on
neighborhood hearsay, so I can’t confirm how much truth there is to it. However, I do know that Edgard and Mariam had been deeply passionate about saving enough money to move to America so they could start a family here.

The state of Kansas has the largest population of naturalized Sudanese people in the entire United States—a vast majority of whom are hardworking people who have, or should have, in my opinion, the
right
as human beings to aspire to experience the peaceful state of living they could find here in comparison to the Sudan. Which is something Edgard and Mariam wanted at any cost.

Edgard’s brother Samir Amsalu had already moved here eleven years ago and attained citizenship by marrying his wife, Minoo—an American citizen of first-generation Sudanese lineage. All four of them lived in the tiny but cozy ranch across the street, one house to the right. Minoo was a registered nurse at Saint Luke’s Hospital, Samir and Edgard both worked at a local nursing home, caring for elderly tenants, and Mariam stayed at home caring for her and Edgard’s seven-year-old son, Jean Paul. The star of the neighborhood.

Jean Paul was a pure boy. Soft-spoken and gentle. Polite and allergic to bee pollen. He was slender, with a bony, unathletic frame, and wore khaki shorts pulled up to his belly button with a collared shirt tucked into them. He had thin-framed glasses and hyperextended his knees when he walked. He rarely played ball or ran around the neighborhood causing ruckus. Instead, he liked to draw and carried around with him a Big Chief paper tablet and a large box of assorted colored pencils. He drew exceptional pictures of suburban nature, clouds, and African wildlife.

Whenever I was outside, he loved to curiously stare at me from the edge of my driveway, quietly observing whatever I was doing. He always had a pocket full of Dum Dums, and gave me one every time I saw him, before showing me his newest drawings. Every person on the block loved him and would always honk and wave at him when driving by. He was unsurprisingly enrolled in gifted classes, which he only attended four days a week, so he was home with his mother a lot.

Currently, his parents were watching him attempt to ride his bike without training wheels.

“Look at dat young ghetto child, learnin’ how ta ride his bike,” Bennett said, full of compassion and warmth. “I bet dat lil’ nigga gonna be a gangsta when he grow up!”

“Bennett, he’s from the Sudan. He doesn’t act like a ‘gangsta,’ ” I said.

“What? You racist, huh? Don’t even know yo own neighbors!” Bennett said, disgusted. “Dat kid is black. Can’t you see the color of his skin? To know da lil’ niggas struggle? And y’all wonder why so many black folk in prison.”

He then cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled across the street.

“Keep hustlin’ on dat bike,
young playa!
You’ll make it out da hood one day. Smokin’ weed helped me learn how to ride
my
bike,
young ni
—”

I slammed my hand over his mouth. He was seconds away from dropping an n-bomb to actual, real-life, Third-World-country Africans.

“Hey! Let’s get your mom inside so she can relax! Here, Bennett, grab a suitcase!” I put Lillian’s bag in Bennett’s arms.

Harper stared at me, widely opened her eyes, rolled her eyeballs, then walked away. She was already over it.

While Bennett and I brought in his family’s luggage and put it upstairs in the guest bedroom, Harper—bless her—sat down at the kitchen table, chatting to Lillian and Tim. We then took Bennett’s gym bag and two milk crates of belongings down to the basement, where he would sleep while staying with us.

“Damn, you cold pimpin’ now! Dis house is da shit! You could run a full-blown ghetto mafia operation out dis bitch!” Bennett screamed in awe of my finished basement.

“What exactly is ‘a ghetto Mafia operation’?” I asked.

“I’m sayin’, mane, you could, like, sell heron’, coke, have hookers, machine guns, and shit. Some stripper poles, sell some crack, and what not, right? But since it’s so nice and shit, if da cops fuck wichu, be like, ‘Hello, officer, I’m a tooth doctor.’ Haha!”

Bennett tried to give me five after saying that. I politely shook his hand instead.

“Uh. Yeah. I don’t think we’ll be hosting any ‘ghetto mafia operations’ anytime soon.”

“C’mon, nigga! You rap, right?” Bennett said, collapsing onto the couch.

“Yeah. I rap,” I replied.

“Homie, I’m glad we havin’ this talk. Look, my nigga, rappers gotta glorify da streets and shit. You gotta be backhandin’ hos and
stealin’ jewelry from Donald Trump! How you gonna have street cred when you rap ’bout global warnings? We want blood and Lamborghinis wif bullet holes in our music, my G! I could help you learn how to rap like dat.”

“Do you mean ‘global warming’?”

“See? A street nigga like me don’t even know da name of it. But fuck naw. global warming, my ass! It’s a cold world. It ain’t warm. Bring dat street shit!”

“That’s not my style. Nor do I want it to be.”

“Mane . . . fuck!” Bennett said, frustrated. “Aiight, mane, look. Can I tell you a secret, Cuz?”

“Uh. Sure.”

“Look. I ain’t tryin’ to dis you or no shit like dat. But . . . that’s always been your problem, my nigga. You be makin’ dat weirdo, art rap stuff. Rappin’ bout Lord of Da Rings and puppies and all dat shit. You should own twenty houses like this! Makin’ millions! Movin’ Bolivian cocaine like all the famous rappers do. This house don’t even got a stripper pole! Rappers ’posed to have stripper poles in their house!”

“Okay, yeah, some rappers. But that’s just not
me
. I have an audience for what I do, full of respectable, intelligent adults who don’t promote violence, materialism, or negativity.”

Bennett quietly raised his eyebrows, contemplating what I just said. “Pfffffft!!! Hahaha! Mane . . . fuck dat. Violence make da world go ’round! You need to get like 50 Cent and Gucci Mane and make those ghetto, street anthems. Dat raw, gutta shit, for hustlas and thugs, with ambitions like 2Pac, who swim in bathtubs full of money.”

He was impossible to connect with, and I was already losing patience with him, but I had an idea. I figured my newer material was so polished that it might be
somewhat
appealing to him. At least appealing enough. Grabbing a fresh copy of my latest album near the stereo, I popped it in the little system I kept in the basement.

“Okay, check this out,” I said.

“Is this yo new shit?” Bennett asked.

“Yeah, this is new. I think you may like it.”

“Bump dat shit den, nigga. I ain’t heard yo shit in a good minute. Maybe it got better. It used to be
booty
though! You was rappin’
’bout granola bars and savin’ panda bears and shit. Hahaha! Lemme hear dat hood flava! I don’t wanna hear raps about how it’s important to wash my hands and eat my five food groups! I wanna hear about you blastin’ a shotgun at a bitch nigga and throwin’ one million bucks at a stripper ’cause she pissed you off, my nigga. Like how real rappin’ thugs do it up in the strip club, G.”

I couldn’t understand why he kept suggesting my music was about things like puppies and granola bars. I mean, no, it wasn’t the edgy, street-driven stuff that someone like Waka Flocka Flame makes, but I certainly didn’t talk about freeing Malomar or Myanmar or whatever. I made music about life as I knew it. About heartbreak, financial woes, blue-collar struggles, drug addiction, and loss.

He was quietly staring at me, waiting for me to press play. In that very moment, I noticed that he had the words
Tony Montana
with a picture of Al Pacino, aka Scarface, holding a machine gun, tattooed on his right pectoral muscle. I’d also like to point out that Scarface, in Bennett’s tattoo, had angel wings.

He had what appeared to be a monster tattoo on his left pectoral muscle.

“Uh . . . why do you have a monster tattooed on one chest muscle and Scarface tattooed on your other chest muscle?”

“ ’Cause, like . . . nigga, you know how dem Messican stripper bitches get a angel and a devil tattooed on dem?”

“Uh. Sure? I guess.”

“Can’t you see, nigga? I’m not only a thug, I’m a genius. An artist. A hood scientist. You should prolly let me write yo raps for you. I could come up with tons of clever ghetto shit. Let’s be honest, Cuz. Even you didn’t notice who was in my tattoo. That’s how clever a nigga like Bennett is. Dis nigga right here on my right chest muscle is Freddy Cooger.”

“Krueger?”

“Yup. And he like . . . represent all da ugly thoughts I be havin’ and shit. He’s like da devil on my shoulder and shit. And den, Scarface right here on my left chest muscle, which is da only good movie I ever saw, my nigga Al Pacino . . . he’s like da angel on my other shoulder. Tellin’ me to kill deez niggaz and get money.”

“Bennett, I’m
not trying to sound like an asshole. But you got your lefts and rights backwards, buddy. Always remember, your left hand makes an
L
.”

I have no idea why I decided to correct him. Maybe to change the subject? Either way, he didn’t acknowledge his inability to differentiate between left and right. He just changed the subject.

“Hurry up and play dat shit, ya ol’ fruitcake ass nigga!” he said. “I wanna kick you a rap I wrote after.”

It didn’t even occur to me that Bennett had decided to start rapping himself.

“You write rap music now?”

“Yep. My name is Bennett Gotti, aka Ciroc Obama, aka Pat Bennett Tar, aka One Man Gangbang, aka Steal Your Bike Tyson.”

I looked at him for a moment and, to my credit, instead of laughing, I just pressed play on the stereo.

The inner guts of the CD player buzzed, clicked, pinged, and squeaked while loading the disc. I quickly skipped to the second track, which was a song of mine titled “War Drum.” The beat began with an echo chamber of xylophones, syncopating in an awkward, staircasing rhythm for a few measures, then Southern rap–inspired 808 snares rolled and rattled before the thunderously pulsing bassline kicked in, with the rest of the beat in full bloom over top of it.

I was menacingly nodding my head, double time. Partially because I loved the song, partially because I was encouraging Bennett to love the song as well.

My first few stanzas came in:

And I remember back when I was twenty-five,

when I was still young, still tender, still passionate with sunny vibes,

before the rain, before the tragedies and bloody skies,

before my memories were massacred and mummified . . .

Bennett was staring at the ceiling. He rolled his eyes, the song visibly bothering him. My verse continued.

sippin on a rocks glass, warm Scotch, cold ice,

I like relaxing, don’t mistake that for a dull life,

my whole life, it’s been really hard to breathe,

I’ve been waiting for a person that could finally put my heart at ease,

I weave through the carbon freeze,

wind blows through the scarlet trees,

it’s been years since I felt jealousy, since I felt this pressure,

hell-bent for leather, shedding felt tip letters,

so down-swill your beer,

you turn thirty just so you can realize that everything is downhill from here,

say good-bye to having party-time amongst friends,

and say hello to single mothers that don’t trust men.

This is the life! This is paradise!

Feeling so incredible, my head is full of
vice-es,

this is the light, living with no spite,

there is not a reason to be evil or divi-sive,

all my friends know, that my heart is like a drum,

that my heart is like a war drum,

all my friends know, that my heart is like a drum,

that my heart is like a war drum.

Harper appeared at the bottom of the basement staircase. She surveyed the room, grinned, and approached us.

“What are you guys up to? Are you playing Bennett the new record?” she asked while sitting down next to Bennett on the couch—reluctantly, he was shirtless after all—and looking up at me.

I turned the volume down on the song.

“Oh, you don’t have to turn it down, honey. I just wanted to tell you boys that Lillian and Tim are laying down in the guest bedroom upstairs. I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said.

“Nah, I’m kinda happy you did. Cuz, damn . . . dat shit was . . . dat shit waaaaas . . . wick wick WACK! Mothafuckin’ weak!” Bennett said.

“You didn’t even hear the whole song!” I protested.

“Don’t gotta, doo. You still on dat lame, depressin’ shit,” Bennett said, disappointed.

“You don’t like that one?” Harper asked, turning to Bennett.

“Not . . . really,” Bennett said with a bratty nasally texture to his voice. “I mean damn, playboy. What da fuck does ‘money fried’ mean?” Bennett said.

“ ‘Mummified’ means, like, you know? A mummy?” I said.

“Nigga, a mummy? You rappin’ about fuckin’ mummies? Niggas wrapped in toilet paper for Halloween?” Bennett said.

“No. It’s poetic, dude. It means like v—”

But Bennett cut me off. “I don’t care what it mean, fool. I ain’t feelin’ it.”

“I think it’s good,” Harper said.

“Well yeah ’cause y’all go steady and shit. You his bitch, so you hafta love his raps,” Bennett said.