I paced from the living room to the kitchen and back again, deep in my head. Sigel kept such late hours, and I always assumed it was because he was in the street. I remember one night he came home and was jumpy.
His spirit was unsettled. He tried to act the complete opposite, but I could see it in his eyes. Even when he climbed into the bed, he tossed and turned the entire night until he eventually gave up on sleep.
The doorbell caused me to jump. Before going to the door, I peeked at my cameras from my app and then rushed to open the door. “Where did you park?”
“Around the block… everything locked up on this block,” Gerald replied, taking up the doorway.
I grabbed his hand and pulled him, shutting the door and locking it behind us. “Anybody follow you?”
“Baby, the fuck is going on?” He walked closer to me, caressing the side of my face, while I looked up into his eyes.
“Sigel is the RedHook killer,” I blurted, unable to keep this secret to myself.
I didn’t want to keep this to myself.
Gerald stared down at me, never second guessing what was coming out of my mouth. I explained everything to him, grabbing his hand and bringing him down to the basement with me.
“And he’s on his way over here?” he questioned, pulling his gun from behind and cocking it back.
“No, remember what Forty said. We cannot touch him right now, we don’t know who is watching him.” I reminded him because he had this murderous look in his eyes.
He grabbed my chin, staring down into my eyes. It was a look I had never witnessed before. Gerald was always so chill, calm, and forever flirting with me. This wasn’t the Gerald I was used to, this was Goon.
CHAPTER 3
GOON
Before I was locked up,I wasn’t a structured ass nigga. I woke up in the afternoon, ate whatever, and had no structure in my life. Me and the word routine couldn’t be spoken in the same sentence, because that wasn’t my life.
When you went to prison, you had no choice but to become structured. You were living on another man’s time. Depending on them to let you out your cage like an animal, and tell you when to eat, sleep, and shit.
Someone having that much control over you fucked with your mental. If you were a weak man before entering prison, you would be ten times weaker being behind bars. I entered prison already knowing how shit went because of my uncle Chef. Growing up, he was in and out of prison, and at those times when he was out, he made sure to always put me and Khaos on.
If you were out there doing crime, then you needed to be man enough to sit up and do your time. There was never any snitching from a real man. He knew eventually his day would come, and he prepared to sit up away from his family to do the time he was being sentenced to.
The hardest part of doing my time wasn’t actually doing the time. It was being away from my family. Leaving my little brother to be the man of our family, while I sat in a cell. It didn’t help that Chef was locked up around the same time as me. It was up to Khaos to hold it down, and make sure my mother, aunt, and cousin were straight.
He was shoved into the role of being the leader of our family, and he rose to the occasion. Anything I needed, Khaos was on that shit, and made sure our family was never starving.
The respect I had for my brother was immense. Growing up, he followed behind me and wanted to do everything that I did. I felt some guilt for him being in this lifestyle. I was supposed to make sure he went to school and stayed far away from the bullshit.
After praying and then going on my run, I came back into the house dripping with sweat. The smell of porridge with a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg invaded my nostrils, as I came into the kitchen. My mother was at the stove, mixing the porridge, while a fresh pot of coffee was brewing.
I maneuvered around her wheelchair, as she continued her conversation with my aunt Maxine. My mother had been in a wheelchair since I had gotten locked up the first time. She lost her leg to diabetes, and now she was permanently in a wheelchair.
“Good morning, Goo-Goo? How was your run?” She called me by the nickname she had given me, and the one my family called me.
“Crowded… when you gonna finally allow me to move you out this apartment?” I muttered, sitting at the wooden kitchen table.
“This community and apartment have always been home, Gerald, eh?” she questioned, as she had the phone tuckedbetween her ear and shoulder, forgetting she was in the middle of a conversation.
Moms didn’t like change. Paulette Wraithe was a woman who loved things to remain the same. That wasn’t her reality when she had two boys that had always been determined to give her more. My mother worked day in and out to provide for the both of us, always leaving me in charge to look out for my brother.
It was hard to keep an eye on him when I was on a mission to give our family more. We fucking deserved more, and it seemed like life kept kicking us down. My mother was a Jamaican immigrant who worked hard as shit. We lived in a small ass apartment on Winthrop Avenue. It was a one-bedroom apartment, and moms slept on the couch, giving us boys the room. Every night when Khaos fell asleep on the couch, and I was washing the dishes, I could hear the downstairs door and the stairs creak as she came up to our apartment.
Tiredness lived in her eyes, and depending on the weather, she either brought the coldness from cooler months, or the warmth from the warmer months with her. Never complaining, even though she had every reason to.
She trusted a man.
