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Authors: Noire

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BOOK: Thong on Fire
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I almost broke down when I went into my room. That big old bed had been sliced down the middle and then all the way across, gutted like a deer. My satin sheets and blankets were all cut the hell up. My shoes and clothes were ripped and torn and in one big pile in the middle of the floor. My jewelry box was empty, and every diamond, pearl, and precious metal I’d owned was gone.

It looked like a tornado had gone through the apartment, tearing shit up from one end to the other. Debris crunched under my feet as I walked slowly back to the living room where Aunt Ruthie was still rocking her oversized baby.

“They had a warrant,” she said, and shifted Kaz on her lap, and the way he looked at me I knew he wanted to get down. She let out a short, bitter laugh. “But Swag left a dirty trail leading straight to his own front door.”

I bit my lip. “Well what do we do now? Are they gonna pay for all the shit they tore up? I know they don’t think we gone live up in here like this! Did you hear from Uncle Swag? Do you have the number to his lawyer?”

Aunt Ruthie yawned and started patting her foot.

“I told Swag a long time ago to stop fooling around with them Haitians and signing all them fake documents. This is what you get when you climb in bed with drug dealers and low-down criminals. He knows I wouldn’t go down to no jailhouse even to see about my own mama, and if he has a lawyer I don’t know nothing about it.”

I stood in the middle of the demolished room staring at her. The chair she was sitting on was almost the only piece of furniture that wasn’t broke up.

This chick didn’t have no fight in her. I hated the way she had tucked her damn tail between her legs and given up. Uncle Swag was in jail, his picture all on the damn news, and all she could do was sit there rocking a fifty-pound pony and patting her damn foot. I could have yanked her off that chair and stomped her into the floor.

“Aunt Ruthie, we gotta do something. We can’t just be sitting here looking stupid and waiting for something to happen. The first thing we gotta do is get Uncle Swag out.”

She gave me a funky look, and opened her mouth, but then the doorbell rang and we both jumped. I threw Aunt Ruthie a funky look of my own before answering it. I looked through the peephole and when I saw Tollie standing out there I snatched the door open and almost fell into his arms with relief.

“Tollie! Damn I’m glad to see you. Uncle Swag got—”

Tollie pushed into the apartment and covered my mouth with his big ol’ hand. He shook his head quickly, then let me go and put his finger to his lips. I caught on real fast, understanding his signal. I had never stopped to consider that the house might be wired, but if the feds had Uncle Swag boxed in then there was no telling how they had gotten their info.

We spent the next fifteen minutes passing notes. Tollie would write on a piece of paper and let me and Aunt Ruthie read it, and then we would write down whatever we wanted to say back and let him read it. Tollie knew a whole lot more than what the news had reported. Not only was they saying Uncle Swag had been playing both ends against the middle and hooking up Haitian felons and illegal immigrants with fake liquor licenses for their clubs, they also thought he was involved with the murder of a Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages employee who found out what Uncle Swag was up to and ended up floating dead in the East River. They’d waited a long time before making a move, laying in the cut until they got enough of what they needed to shut him down.

Aunt Ruthie wrote that four men in street clothes had come barging in like they wanted to knock the door down. They’d handed her a warrant and even gave her a chance to read it, then went to work tearing shit up. She said they confiscated every computer in the house, even the one Kaz used to play his video games on. They told her all of Uncle Swag’s bank accounts had been seized so not to bother trying to use her debit or credit cards. They’d even found the safe Uncle Swag had had built into the wall in their private shower.

“Damn,” I said out loud, shaking my head after reading all that.

Tollie just shrugged, like, “Hey, this is what these cats do.”

By the time we finished “talking” I felt even worse. In my head I kept seeing that picture of Uncle Swag being rushed down the sidewalk on Park Place in handcuffs. I was proud of his ass though. He was a G for real. Wasn’t no trying to hide under no jacket, or holding his head down in shame for my Uncle Swag. He walked outta that building and got into that car like those cats holding his arms was on his payroll and the detective driving the unmarked car was his damn chauffeur.

Tollie said they probably wasn’t gonna give Uncle Swag no bail because of the murder charge. He told me and Aunt Ruthie to grab whatever clothes we had left and come with him. He was putting us in a hotel for the night.

“What about tomorrow?” I asked him after he checked us into a five-star hotel on the East Side. Any other time I would have been wildin’ about staying in such a fly, high-class joint and ordering shit from room service that I couldn’t even pronounce. But right now my whole life felt shaky. Without Uncle Swag I was lost and ass out. All I wanted to do was go back to living the way I was used to.

“Don’t worry,” Tollie said. “I’ll try to get in to see Swag tomorrow and we’ll get this shit figured out.” He reached into his pocket and pulled ten one-hundred-dollar bills off the top of his money clip. My eyes followed that green as he passed it to Aunt Ruthie.

“Call downstairs and get something for the kids to eat, Ruthie. Order them a movie too. I’ll be back to check on y’all tomorrow.”

Tollie kissed us both goodbye and left. Aunt Ruthie went over to the sofa where Kaz was coloring in a book they’d given him at the front desk. She sat down and pulled him into her lap. I took my shoes off and plopped down on the bed, then sat there with my eyes glued to the zipper on Aunt Ruthie’s Manilio Argucci purse where she had just stuck all that doe.

Chapter 5

I
DIDN’T EVEN
act like I was going to school the next day.

I heard Aunt Ruthie getting Kaz up and dressed for school in the other room, and I laid in the bed thinking and staring at the ceiling until the door slammed and they were gone.

I wanted to call Tollie and see if he’d left to go see Uncle Swag already, but even if he had, it was still too early for him to have any news. I got up and took a shower, then got dressed and went in the outer room and chewed the two chicken nuggets Kaz had ordered then left on his plate the night before.

Aunt Ruthie had the grand that Tollie had given her last night, but I was almost broke. With only sixty-seven dollars, my platinum tennis bracelet, a diamond choker and a pair of diamond studs, and almost no clothes at all, I felt damn near naked.

I hung around the hotel room for hours waiting for Aunt Ruthie to get back. It shouldn’t have taken her more than an hour and a half to get Kaz to his school across town and come back, but at noon I was still by myself and I started thinking the worst.

That bitch had left me.

I gave myself a hard mental kick. I knew I should have slid some of that money outta her damn purse, but her sanctified ass had practically slept with it between her skinny legs. She was probably glad Uncle Swag got knocked. A baller like him had to have some emergency chips stashed somewhere, and Aunt Ruthie probably planned on sticking him and getting rid of me at the same time.

I thought about my options and came up with a real short list. Aside from Dip and Plat, all the other niggas I’d fucked with were basically small-time hustlers. Kimichi was still living in Harlem, but she’d gotten kicked out of our old apartment, not that I wanted to be with her ass anyway. Every now and then I would run into her on the streets when I was hanging out. She was skinny as hell and looked a hot-ass mess.

“That’s your mother?” Tai had asked me one night after we left the club and Kimichi ran across an avenue full of traffic and caught me going into a twenty-four-hour McDonald’s.

I was too embarrassed to answer. Kimichi had on a pair of high-water men’s plaid pants and a dirty muscle shirt. Her long legs looked ridiculous in those short-man pants, and she had black socks and platform sandals on her feet.

“Seung Cee!” she screamed over and over. She was so high she was weaving on her feet. “Oh!” She tried to wrap her bony arms around me. “I look for you, Seung Cee!”

She smiled and showed a mouth full of rotten teeth. She tried to hug me again and I jumped back and hid behind Tai.

“Girl!” Tai said, pushing me toward her, refusing to be the blocker. “Go ’head and talk to your moms, Saucy.” She held her hand out to Kimichi. “How you doing? I’m Tai, Saucy’s best friend.”

I had looked over my shoulder for a month straight after that. Hoping Kimichi’s scary-looking ass didn’t roll up on me again. My moms was straight out there, but at least Tai was still high on my options list. I dialed her digits and her phone rang for a long time. Just when I thought it was gonna roll over to her voice mail, she picked up.

“Saucy! I’m in
class
!”

“Well dip your ass outta there then,” I told her.

“Is your uncle still on lock?”

“Yeah. But I’m chillin’ hard in a phat hotel, girl. Why don’t you cut out and meet me over here? We can take a cab uptown and pick up some sticky, then come back and drink up all these little bottles of liquor they got in the bar.”

“I have exams coming up, Saucy. So do you. I’m sorry about your uncle but you need to bring your ass to school. Shit. They gone take my damn phone. I gotta go.” Click.

Fuckin’ Tai! I was down and almost out, but I was a fighter and there was no surrender in me. I tossed my cell phone on the bed and was sitting there trying to figure out my next move when Tollie showed up.

“Hey,” he said, kissing my cheek as I let him in. “Where’s Ruthie?”

I shrugged and strode across the floor in my cutoff shorts that barely covered my ass. “I don’t know. I think she cut out on me. She went to take Kaz to school this morning and never came back. Shit, it’s almost checkout time so she probably dipped.”

“Calm down, Saucy,” he said, but I noticed that the “it’s all good” look he’d had on his face yesterday was gone.

“Look,” he said, leaning his elbow on a small table. “I saw Swag this morning and shit is bad. It’s worse than any of us thought.”

“What?” I said, my fear getting me hyped. “Whatever go down you and his boys is gone look out for him though, right? Y’all gone get the bail money together and get him out, ain’t you?”

Tollie reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a blue rectangular bag. It was one of those soft plastic things you put bank deposits in.

“There ain’t no bail, Saucy. Ain’t no money either. Not even to pay his lawyers. Everything he had was in that fuckin’ safe they busted into, even though them dirty fuckers only officially reported about a third of what Swag told me was in there.”

He dropped the blue bag on the counter.

“Hold on to this. Give it to your aunt when she gets back. It’s enough in there for her to take y’all back to Harlem and find an apartment until some of them niggas who owe your uncle money start paying their debts.”

Oh I knew better than that!

“And who the fuck is gonna make them pay, Tollie? What are we supposed to do? Go to the police if they decide they wanna stiff him? Stiff us?”

Tollie shook his head. “It’s fucked up, Saucy. But that was your uncle’s downfall, baby. He was overconfident. Sloppy. He didn’t stack his shit properly for the rainy days. That emergency stash shoulda never been kept in his house. But he thought he was flying under the radar. Thought he was too smooth to get caught. He’s gonna try to cut some kinda deal soon, he said. Let’s hope it works.”

He shrugged, then pushed the blue bag toward me.

“Take this, Saucy. Tell Ruthie to make it last as long as she can. I gotta roll down to Atlanta, but I’ll be checking on y’all and I’ll make sure you get a little bit more bank soon.”

When Tollie left he took my hope with him. Uncle Swag was being held in a federal prison and you had to be eighteen to visit him. I opened the bag Tollie had left then sat at the table and counted the thick stack of bills inside. Ten thousand dollars wasn’t a whole lot of money but it was a good start. It took me about five minutes to decide what to do with it. Harlem was a moving town. Shit changed hands every few minutes and if I could hook up with Plat and move some weight, I could flip that ten and make it forty or fifty in just a couple of days.

I stuck the money down in the bottom of my Dooney & Bourke purse and grabbed my cell. Downstairs I asked the doorman to hail me a taxi. I had just climbed into the back of the yellow cab and was giving him an address in Harlem when I saw Aunt Ruthie walking up to the front of the hotel. I didn’t understand what Uncle Swag had ever seen in that run-down bitch. She didn’t have half the fight in her whole body that I had in one strand of my damn hair. I was a survivor and she was already sunk. Her whole fuckin’ life was over and you could tell just by looking at her.

I shifted my purse on my lap, feeling the weight of the money inside.

Fuck Aunt Ruthie,
I thought as the cab pulled away from the curb and into the Midtown traffic. Let that bitch call her sister or go out and fend for herself. Kaz was cute. She’d find somebody to feel sorry for him and give them somewhere to stay. As for me? I was still wearing clothes that had played out two days ago. Harlem was calling me loud and clear, but first I was taking my black ass shopping.

In three days I was back down to nothing.

Well, almost nothing. I went to Michael Kors on Madison Avenue and caught a dope sale. They had a red Indian-collared, crocheted shirtdress in there that fit me like a mutha! It was sleeveless with just a thin satin lining, and it stopped right under the hump of my ass. I saw the perfect Vachetta Mazatlan shoes to match it too, and walked out of there with several getups that set me back more than a G.

I took a taxi over to Nordstrom in New Jersey and found the cutest ruby earrings ever, and ya know the bracelet to match it ended up in my purchases too. I bought some jeans at Burberry, two cute bags at Gucci, and some new boots at Neiman Marcus that I planned to save for the wintertime, when it got cold. You know I had to get me a powder-blue leather jacket and some powder-blue Timbs to match, and a bunch of other stuff to replace all the fly gear them feds had ripped to shreds when they tossed our apartment.

I wasn’t just focused on self, though. Back in New York I went in Macy’s to get some thongs, and saw a diamond choker in a markdown case that just screamed Tai’s name. It wasn’t my style, but it was perfect for her. I shopped my ass off and didn’t feel bad for spending almost half of Tollie’s money neither. Shit, I’d been traumatized as fuck by Uncle Swag getting knocked, and shopping helped relax me and make me feel better about myself.

But then I got down on a flip deal with Plat and that nigga did me wrong. He claimed he got beat by a connect and the whole thing went bad. I felt stupid as hell. Instead of turning Tollie’s money over, Plat had turned me over. And fucked me in the ass while he had me in the right position.

“Damn, Saucy,” Tai said. It was almost eleven at night and I was sitting in her kitchen watching her fry some bacon and make blueberry pancakes. “How’s he just gonna do you like that? That shit is messed up. I thought that nigga Plat was cool?”

I groaned and pushed my hair back, then twisted it up into a roll. “I thought he was cool too. But that nigga was jerking me from the gate, girl. He’s still swole because I crossed him out for Akbar. That’s what’s real.”

“Yeah,” Tai agreed. She opened the refrigerator and looked inside. “I’ma scramble me some eggs. Want some?”

I shook my head. Tai’s mother had been walking back and forth. In the kitchen, out the kitchen, past the kitchen. I knew her nosy ass was probably sucking up every word we said.

“So did you ever catch up with him to try and get your money back? What’s he saying about that?” Tai asked.

I sighed. “He ain’t saying shit because I can’t call him. He must be hiding underground somewhere because I can never find him when I’m in Harlem. His number is in my cell phone, but that shit got cut off. Either Aunt Ruthie stopped my service, or maybe nobody paid the bill.”

Tai scrambled her eggs and spread a slice of American cheese on top and let it melt. Then she squirted a gob of ketchup on top of the cheese and poured almost half a bottle of syrup over her pancakes.

“So where you stayin’?” she asked and chewed hard on a piece of slab bacon. Her mother walked past the kitchen again and I waited until I heard her house shoes going down the hall.

“I was gonna ask you to see if your moms’ll let me chill here for a minute.”

I saw the look on Tai’s face. I hadn’t stayed more than two nights in a row at her house ever since that night she had poked a hole in her uterus tryna give herself an abortion when we was fourteen. Somehow Mrs. Watkins got it in her head that the baby and the hysterectomy Tai ended up getting was my damn fault. How?!? I didn’t get Tai pregnant and tell her to wait so long to get rid of it! I didn’t unbend the coat hanger and shove it up her pussy! All I did was sneak her the gin so she could get drunk first!

“Just for a minute, Tai. Maybe a week or two until I can get on my feet.”

Tai stuffed some pancakes in her mouth. “I already know what she’s gone say. But I’ll ask her.”

My stomach felt shaky as I watched Tai grease her plate. I felt like a beggar again. Like that dirty raggedy Saucy nobody gave a damn about. Like that nasty little girl who was so grimy you had to scrub her down before she could come in your house because she might fuck up your child’s sheets.

When Tai finished eating she stood up and put her plate in the sink. “C’mon, Sauce. Lemme ask her before she goes to bed.”

But her moms was standing right there as soon as we stepped out of the kitchen. Before Tai could say a word, her mother beat her to it.

“It’s late, Tai. It’s time for your company to leave. Goodnight, Saucy. Tai, lock the door behind Saucy and make sure you put the chain on it.”

“Ma,” Tai said as her mother turned to walk away. “Ma, I was gone ask you—”

“I
said,
lock my damn door, Tairene. And chain it too.
Goodnight,
Saucy.”

Tai gave me a helpless look and walked me to the door with my bags. As I stepped out of the apartment I heard her get smart with her mother. “Ma! You know her uncle got in trouble. She can’t go back home!”

Her mother answered her just as the door was closing.

“Oh, she ain’t gotta go home, baby. She just gotta get the hell up outta here!”

BOOK: Thong on Fire
13.95Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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