“Is something wrong with those seats?”
I was trying not to turn bad on her ass, but she was really making it hard for me.
“I just wanted to sit beside you. Is that so wrong?”
I don’t know if she thought that she could seduce me with those hazel eyes, but she couldn’t. Plus, a bold bitch wasn’t the bitch for me. I curled my upper lip over my nose because she was damn near talking in my face, and I could smell the Vodka on her breath. Something about the smell made me feel sick to my fucking stomach. Every time I smelled it, it brought me back to a place that I didn’t want to be. A place that I had pushed in the back of my mind long ago…
When I was sixteen, everything changed. And not in any small way either. I’m talking about the kind of change that splits your life into before and after. It had to do with the woman who birthed me. That part of my story isn’t something I speak on, and I only repeated telling it twice. The only person privy to the story besides my dad was Ghost. The start of my trauma all started with her. At first, it was just a feeling. Something withmy mother always felt off. Maybe it was the way she’d look at me sometimes.
Or maybe it was the way she’d linger too long when it came to me. I kept telling myself I was tripping and that the gut-wrenching feeling that would arise around her was in my head. It had to be because she was my mother. But one night it proved it wasn’t. She crossed a line that should never be crossed. I shut it down quickly, or at least I felt like I had once she hit me with a couple of these this is what mommies do for boys, they make them feel good remarks. I pushed away from her like my life depended on it because at that moment, it felt like it did.
She was drunk, and usually when she got like this, the night would end with her and my dad arguing over some shit. But that night I was in line of her fire. Cornered in the kitchen, she was trying to touch me. The lock on my room door couldn’t turn fast enough once I was safely inside. My mother knocked on the other side, crying, wanting to apologize, and it felt like she was doing it for hours. I rushed out of the kitchen so quickly that I had left my cellphone on the counter. So, for six hours, I stared at the walls in my room as I waited. My mind was so all over the place that I didn’t even want to turn my television on. Eventually, her knocks and cries ceased to exist, and then I heard the front door to the house close. Still, I didn’t open my room door because I didn’t know if she would be back. I didn’t even know if she had left for real or if it was just a ploy to get me to come out of the room.
As I paced the carpet of my room, a piece of me started to get mad at my damn self. I was debating whether to say anything to anyone. What would happen if no one believed me? I towered over my damn mother, but when her hands were in my underwear, I couldn’t do anything but freeze up. Why the fuck did I freeze up? Was she right? Why would my rod brick up with her touch if she wasn’t right? Na, she had to be wrong.Touching a boy in his private fucking places is not what a mother is supposed to do for her son. As I sat alone in my room, I became angrier by the second. I didn’t even lose my virginity yet, and she was on some weird shit. That’s when I made up my mind that someone had to know. I wasn’t going to sit on this shit. I told my father that same night, once he walked in from work. I waited until I heard him step in the house and call out to me, as he always did.
“Tahari, why the hell haven’t you taken this trash out?”
He was fussing like he always did, but I knew he was home, so it was safe to unlock my room door. I didn’t know how he was going to react. I didn’t know if he’d believe me or look at me crazy. But I had to tell my truth. I swear I was relieved when he didn’t do either. He saw something on my face as tears rolled down my cheeks as I retold the story. He had to hear something in my voice as it cracked with the retelling of my encounter. That had to be enough for him because he didn’t say much. He just got up from the couch, walked into their bedroom, and the next thing I knew, he was throwing her shit into bags. He told me to shower and to get ready for school the next day, and that he would take out the trash. I wasn’t sure what time my mother had come back to the house, but around two in the morning, I was woken up by yelling.
It was loud and ugly. The kind of argument that would have neighbors calling the police, but in our neighborhood, they minded their damn business. I tossed and turned in my bed as I heard the two of them go at each other. She kept denying it, but my father was not hearing any of that. I heard a loud ass boom when the front door slammed and just like that… He put her out. I still couldn’t believe that my own mother would do some shit like that. All that mattered now was that she was gone. The house felt empty after that. It just felt hollow. Since that night, something in my dad had changed. I don’t know if it was thedisbelief of what my mother had done or if it was the simple fact that deep down inside, he couldn’t put it past her. Whatever the reason, it was just him and me after that, but it wasn’t like we got closer or anything. If anything, we got quieter. Like we both knew, something had been broken that couldn’t be fixed. We never spoke about it again, either. Not even once…
“Bitch, why you are sitting so close to my damn bro? Let’s go, Trigga.”
I blinked away the memory when I heard Ghost’s voice. I grabbed my phone off the chair and then stood from my seat.
“Who the hell are you calling a bitch?”
She had to be drunk as shit because she was slurring her words.
“You… ya old ass sitting up in a damn club you ain’t got no grandkids to watch? Nobody about to give you $40 for some coochie over here, mama.”
I chuckled as I grabbed Ghost by the arm and pulled his toxic ass toward the exit. He would argue with anyone because he never gave a fuck. Other niggas our age had a thing for older women, but I didn’t, and he knew why. I guess a piece of me was still healing from that bullshit with my mother.
“Did everything go good with ol’ boy?” I asked as we walked down the sidewalk toward the parking lot where the car was parked.
“Yup, everything is smooth.”
I just shook my head. I didn’t trouble him with all the details because I trusted him. As long as the money was right, I was straight.
Chapter 10
Giovani “Ghost” Baxter
Sleep ain’t come easy. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I slept at all. Just when I thought I was about to get some shuteye, the sun was already pushing through the cheap hotel curtains. After the play last night, Trigga and I grabbed a motel room not too far from the strip. My head was pounding, and not from the liquor I had had the night before, but from the reality that was sitting heavily on my chest. We sold everything. Every little baggie of white powder. And instead of feeling like a win, it felt like I just signed up for something I couldn’t deliver. Ryan wanted more coke in bulk, and we didn’t have access to it anymore.
I sat on the edge of the bed with my elbows on my knees and my phone in my hand. I kept staring at the same number, as if it might change if I looked at it long enough. Ryan was really about his business. The man came out of nowhere and changed things for us in one night. He paid top dollar for everything we had left. Being money hungry, I agreed to supply him as if we had anything to supply. Like we weren’t running off a one-time lick. I dragged my hand down my face and exhaled slowly.
“Damn…”
This wasn’t excitement. This was pressure. The kind that either turns you into something bigger or crushes you. Trigga didn’t even know that I had taken some money for the next shipment, which wasn’t a shipment at all because we didn’t have shit. Ryan wanted to show good faith, so he gave me 10 percent of the price of ten bricks to prove that he was serious about doing business.
Across the room, Trigga was knocked out cold, lying there as if none of this existed. Like we didn’t just step into something we might not be able to walk out of. I saw how he fell back last night, and honestly, I envied that for a second. Since we were kids, I was always the one to lead. I took that role because I was older. I took that role because his father had instilled it in me. He had said to always look out for Tahari. I knew his father before I even knew him because he had been in my life for as long as I could remember. Back in the day, I used to think that he was my dad. We favored, and I mean badly. He, Tahari, and I all had the same mole above our right eye. Not to mention, he was always around. I remember when I was a young boy, I had asked my mother about it, and she quickly shut it down. I never asked again.
While Trigga snored beside me, I looked at him with an annoyed facial expression, but then I shook it off. Somebody had to think for us, and right now, that somebody was me. I was scrolling through my phone contacts when I came across just the person who could aid in this situation. Bashar was the little homie who had put me on to MB’s Auto. I wondered if he knew of any other work stashed away in another one of their locations. My thumb hovered over the contact before I finally hit dial. It rang longer than I liked. Once. Twice. And then…
“Yeah?” His voice came through low and cautious.
I leaned back slightly and made sure to keep my tone even.
