“We’re doing everything we can, Ms. Thompson.”
“These things take time, Ms. Thompson.”
Bitch, what TIME? My son ain’t got time! He DEAD!
But I didn’t say that. Just smiled in their faces and died a little more inside every time they fed me that bullshit.
I picked up my phone and scrolled through my contacts until I landed on a name I’d been avoiding.
Shawn.
Zoo, everybody called him. Nigel’s daddy. The man I’d spent the last decade trying to keep out of my bed and out of my business because I knew—I KNEW—that nigga wasn’t nothing but trouble wrapped in a fine-ass package.
We’d been young and dumb when I got pregnant. I was nineteen, shaking my ass at this club in Northeast, thinking I was the baddest bitch in DC. Zoo was twenty-two, already in the streets, already running with the Brick City Crew. He wasn’t no kingpin or nothing—low level, really, just a worker bee doing whatever them niggas told him to do—but he had money and swag and a dick that made me forget he was a walking red flag.
By the time I realized I’d fucked up, Nigel was already cooking in my belly.
I tried to keep my son away from all that bullshit. Tried to raise him right, keep him in school, keep him off them corners. And for the most part, it worked. Nigel was a good kid. Smart. Got decent grades. Stayed out of trouble—or at least I thought he did.
Zoo wasn’t shit when Nigel was coming up. Let me be clear about that. That nigga was in and out, more out than in, chasing money and bitches and whatever else was more important than his son. I raised Nigel by myself. Worked doubles at the hospital, picked up shifts at the club on weekends, did whatever I had to do to keep food on the table and clothes on his back. Zoo would pop up every few months with some Jordans or a few hundred dollars and think that made him father of the year. Then he’d disappear again, off doing whatever street niggas do.
Then he got locked up five years ago on some drug shit, and I ain’t hear from him at all. No letters. No calls. No asking for commissary money. Nothing. Just me and Nigel, same as always.
But when he got out a few months back? Something was different. He actually started trying. Showing up. Taking Nigel to get fresh cuts and new sneakers. Spending time with him. Being present in a way he never was before. I don’t know if prison changed him or if he just finally grew up, but for the first time in Nigel’s life, he had a father who acted like one.
But being out had changed him. That stint upstate did something to him. The Zoo who came home wasn’t the same nigga who went in. He was darker now. Angrier. Sloppy in a way that made me nervous. Word on the street was he’d been drinking heavy, popping percs like they was candy, getting into shit that was gonna land him right back behind bars—or in a box next to our son.
Still, he was Nigel’s father. And right now, he was the only one who seemed to give a fuck about finding out who killed my baby.
The police wasn’t doing shit. Maybe it was time to let the streets handle it.
I pressed the call button before I could talk myself out of it.
He answered on the third ring.
“Brandi.” His voice was rough. Slurred a little. Nigga was probably high right now. “What you want?”
“What I WANT?” Oh, this motherfucker had me fucked up. “Nigga, our son is DEAD. Been dead for days. And you asking me what I want like I’m bothering you?”
“Yo, chill?—”
“Chill? CHILL?” I was on my feet now, pacing the living room, my blood pressure probably through the roof. “You said you was gonna handle this! Said you had your little homies out there asking questions! Said you was gonna find who did this! And what? WHAT, Shawn? You ain’t found a goddamn thing!”
“Brandi—”
“My baby is six feet under and you out here doing God knows what—probably laid up with one of your lil hoes—instead of finding his killer!”
“I’M TRYING!” His voice boomed through the phone so loud I had to pull it away from my ear. “The fuck you think I been doing? You think I ain’t out here every day putting pressure on niggas? This shit ain’t easy, Brandi!”
“Ain’t easy? AIN’T EASY?” I laughed, but it came out like a scream. “You know what ain’t easy? Burying your twelve-year-old son. Picking out a casket for your child. Watching them throw dirt on his face. THAT’S what ain’t easy. All you gotta do is find one nigga. ONE. And you can’t even do that.”
“I’m handling it?—”
“You ain’t handling SHIT! You a whole bitch, Zoo! A BITCH! Out here letting your son’s killer walk around free while you get high and drunk and do everything except what you supposed to be doing!”
The line went quiet. For a second I thought he’d hung up on me.
Then, in a voice so cold it made my skin prickle: “Say that shit to my face.”
