My Mom is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen outside of movies and television. When I was younger and the kids would tease me about my ragged clothes, nappy hair, and too wide nose, and I would wind up bloodying them and getting suspended from school, I was always proud when my mother came to pick me up. Seeing the expressions on the other kid’s faces when she walked into the office with her long gazelle legs and her smooth flawless mocha skin was almost worth the ass-kicking I would get when we got home. Everyone would “Ooooh!” and “Aaaah!” as she strolled the hallways because, if I was an ugly street urchin, my mother was an African Goddess with a beauty and majesty uncommon in the ghetto. None of those kids had ever seen a woman like my mom before. There was no more lovely sight anywhere in our neighborhood. Not the way the sun set behind the projects looking like the world was on fire. Not the way the stars filled the sky from one end to another when you stood on top of the roof at Duval Manor on a summer night. She was a Goddess to us and she was mine.
In the early seventies she had been a moderately successful model and even did a brief stint as a sort of Black Vanna White for a local game show before she quit to find more stable work after she left Darryl the first time. She didn’t think it was healthy for her to spend so much time away on photo shoots and thought a regular job would allow her to be the type of mother she thought I needed. It was funny to me because it seemed like we lived better when she was modeling than when she got her regular job and I definitely saw her more then despite trips to New York for modeling shows and the long hours spent filming the gameshow. Still, she remained a shocking beauty and I loved her more than anything on earth. She doesn’t really speak to me anymore though. Neither does Tank and Huey’s mom. They’re both disgusted with my choice of occupations and they don’t even know the half of it.
Mom thinks I sell drugs like every other common thug in the neighborhood. I’ve never sold so much as a single rock in my life, not even a joint. I kill people. Scratch had originally hired Tank and I as bodyguards but that was just the lure to get us in. We were slowly groomed to be hitters and enforcers, taking out competition, disciplining or retiring other dealers in the crew when they got out of line, eliminating witnesses before they could talk. It was all routine now.
Like Huey, Mom thinks I’m a menace to my own people. I am. I’m a menace to just about everyone, but my friends. Still, she hasn’t had to walk home in the snow without winter boots or a heavy winter coat or with holes in her underwear since I started taking care of business in the streets. Grandma hasn’t shed any tears over overdue bills and mortgage payments. Mom hasn’t had to think about selling her body to put food on the table or clothes on our backs like many other moms in the hood often have to consider. No dating men she doesn’t even like just to have someone to borrow money from should she need to. But more to the point, I didn’t have kids laughing at my old, cheap, out of date clothes and calling me dirty anymore. I didn’t intend on doing this forever. The plan was to save up enough money to pay for college and pay off the mortgage on the house and then I’d be done with this shit.
“’Sup, Mom?”
“Don’t talk to me like one of them ignorant street niggas, boy. I ain’t no damn ghetto trash.”
“I just said, hello,” I said shrugging my shoulders
“You said, ’Sup’, like some ignorant ass street nigga. You know how to talk English you save that ghetto slang for when you’re out with your drug dealin’ friends.”
“Well, good morning anyway.”
“I don’t suppose you plan on coming to church with me this morning?”
“Since when did you start going to church?”
“Since you started runnin’around in the streets and worrying me to death.”
“I love you too, Mom. I gotta bounce though. If you leave before I get out of the shower the car keys are in my jacket.”
“I’ll walk.”
“Aw, Mom come on! If you give me a sec I’ll drive you and grandma.”
“Your grandmother left an hour ago while you were sleeping off your hangover. Your food is on the table. I’ll be back by three o’clock.”
She kissed me automatically, lovelessly, then left quickly as if she couldn’t stand to be in my presence anymore. My heart ached.
I showered and left without eating. The bright morning sun seared into my skull giving me an instant headache. My nerves were fraying, raw and bleeding. I needed to calm down and take my mind off my work and family. I needed some pussy.
I didn’t really have a girlfriend. The truth was that I was still kind of sprung on Iesha even though she was having a kid by Huey. I still fantasized about making her mine, falling in love and treating her right. I wanted to do all the things for her I could never imagine doing for any of the cheap money-hungry hoes that got passed around the neighborhood from one thug to the next, their virtues vandalized and pillaged until they wound up catching a disease and burning some poor fool and getting fucked up so bad nobody wanted them anymore. Then they’d wind up turning to crack and selling that thang to the fools who didn’t know or didn’t care. It was funny how girls who nobody ’round the way would touch could still sell their ass to guys outside the hood. I had started looking at every woman I saw in the hood as just a future crackwhore. Not one of them was worth my time—except Iesha.
Deep down I knew Iesha would stay with Huey forever if for no other reason than that he was pretty and there were too few things of genuine beauty in the ghetto that didn’t get spoiled quickly. Iesha would feel like it was her duty to preserve this one beautiful thing. And I was far from pretty. Sure, I had money and a brotha with cash could have just about any woman he wanted and her momma, but I wasn’t about supporting a woman just for some pussy and Iesha was one of the few who wasn’t like that anyway, though I might have made an exception for her.
Lately, I had been bangin’ a neighborhood girl named Yolanda and, even though I knew I wasn’t the only stud she was dirtying the sheets with, something about her raised her above the rest of the hood rat hoes the local thugs passed around like trading cards. Yolanda commanded respect around the way. She was not a small woman, five-foot-ten inches tall and one hundred and eighty pounds or more. For such a big girl she was as fast as a viper. Idiots foolish enough to try to diss her usually ended up with a straight razor against their balls and her thirty-eight pressed to their temple. She was a true player who knew every aspect of the game. One hard-ass gangsta bitch.
Yolanda seemed to be involved in everything. She sold alcohol after hours that she brought over from New Jersey by the caseload. She also sold the best weed in the neighborhood. Besides that she knew everybody’s business and was more accurate and reliable than the six o’clock news. She was the type of person whose name happened to pop up in every conversation. You couldn’t talk about G-town without mentioning her and any argument concerning G-town street history could be settled with one word from her. No one had ever had any reason to contradict her and I doubt they ever would. Even the old-heads consulted her when it came to anything that had happened in her lifetime. Yolanda was the first woman I’d ever had and the best by a long shot. No matter how many girlfriends I had since her I always wound up back in her bed.
She was gorgeous in her own way. Big black eyes with long lashes that covered her half-lidded eyes almost completely giving her this sultry satisfied look that gave you the impression she had just gotten finished smoking a blunt or having one hell of an orgasm. Both guesses would probably be right at any hour of the day since sex and weed were her two favorite vices and she indulged them both obsessively.