She nodded, exhaled, and pressed record on her phone.
A few hours later,I was riding through Jada’s hood. She was antsy. Fidgeting with all of the unnecessary shit dangling from her Chanel. Damn near the whole ride out here, she was quiet. Either scrolling on her phone or looking out of the window. I didn’t address it. Faced a blunt, with my music up to the max.She wanted to see her fuckin’ daddy, she was going to see her fuckin’ daddy. By the way she was acting, I thought about bringing her out here every time she wanted to see him, since it was such a fuckin’ problem.
When I turned the corner, onto Lanchester heads turned. The basketball game in the middle of the street, seized. The little nigga dribbling a ball I provided, chucked his chin as I did about five miles per hour my way through the crowd. In return, I chucked mine. Pulling from my blunt one last time, I put it out in the ashtray and hit the volume button on my steering wheel, lowering the music.
“Fix your face,” I told Jada. “I ain’t on shit.”
She was worried because the last time I was on Lanchester, I damn near killed a nigga. Well, not the last time. The time before that. I didn’t start it. I was provoked. If I did something like that, it usually was because someone had taken me to that level. I didn’t walk around starting shit with niggas. For what? I had too much going on. Too much to lose. I didn’t partake in low level nigga shit anymore. Back in the day, I ran around, terrorizing shit. These days, as a twenty-seven-year-old man with war wounds, a short prison stay under his belt, and a lot of shit to do, I played it cool. I might’ve been chill these days but that didn’t mean niggas could say whatever and get away with it. Had Q kept his mouth shut with the funny shit, what happened to him wouldn’t have happened.
Stopping in front of her childhood home, I shifted the car in park and killed the engine.
“Yeah, you weren’t on shit then neither. You just?—”
“I just what?”
She pulled her shoulders up to her ears, and gripped the handle to her purse, clearly uncomfortable. “Can’t take a joke. You know how niggas out here play.”
I ran my tongue over my bottom lip and stared off at the crowd of niggas shooting dice on the sidewalk a couple of houses down. Instead of paying attention to what they had going on, their eyes were on me. Q stood in the crowd with them, eyes on me, blunt dangling from his crooked bottom lip, eyebrows furrowed, mean mugging. I snorted, pinched the bridge of my nose and turned my attention to Jada.
“Nah. Something tells me that funny shit over with,” I said, sitting up. “Come on. I got shit to do. Ain’t trying to be out here all fuckin day on a dummy mission.”
“How you know it’s a dummy mission, Exodus? If you didn’t want to bring me, you didn’t have to. Flat out?—”
“Man, shut yo ass up and get out,” I Interrupted, stepping out of the car.
I looked up and down the block, before my eyes landed on Q’s ugly ass mug again. His shit was twisted. Hadn’t always been that way though. Before he decided to be a comedian around this bitch, cracking jokes, he was an aight lookin’ nigga. Could pull bitches, easy. His face wasn’t contorted to what it was contorted to after I went across it with the butt of my blick damn near a dozen times.
Q shook his head, looked away, passed the blunt, and put his attention back on the dice game. I smirked and walked off, heading up to the house with Jada on side of me. She threw her hand up at the neighbors on the porch. Old bitches that couldn’t stand the sight of me. Shit, I was most hated around this bitch, for real. Before I did Q dirty, they had love for me. Every time I came through, they asked about my OG and the family. Greeted me with sweet smiles and offered me food too. These days, they didn’t greet me at all. Just turned their noses up and whispered under their breath. I didn’t give a fuck. Like I said before, what happened to Q only happened to him because he provoked me.
How? What’d he say? Made a couple of jokes about how I used to be called Church Boy. Talked about how me and my brothers used to walk around the community with flyers, asking niggas to join the youth choir and volunteer. Said we used to be corny, rocking suits in the middle of the summer, looking about as hot as the hell we tried to keep them out of. Nobody laughed. He kept going though. That was who he was. A clown. A nigga that got off on making muthafuckas laugh. He thought he was hilarious. And had he been talking about another family, maybe niggas would have cracked a smile. None of them did. They kept looking back and forth between Q and I, probably confused by the light smile I wore while he told stories everybody had been around to witness.
I let him get off. Let him crack a couple jokes. But I kept count. Three was my limit. And before he could get the full sentence of the third joke out, I went off in his shit. Knocked him right on his ass. Didn’t give the nigga time to recover before I went across his face with my gun. People from the neighborhood swarmed around us. Niggas tried to pull me off him. Jada did too. But I didn’t let up. Not until I was covered in blood, he was unconscious and I was satisfied with the way his mouth was chewed up.
I wasn’t ashamed of who I was and where I came from. I took honor in it. Even then, I was aight with walking around the neighborhood, spreading the gospel. I did that shit with a smile. I never gave a fuck about fitting in or wanting to be the toughest nigga in the crowd. I didn’t have to do any of that. Because despite running around the hood with my brothers, with pamphlets and shit, niggas knew what it was. I was Church Boy. We were Isaiah’s boys. Pastor’s kids. We might’ve been in church faithfully any time the doors were open, but that didn’t mean we were bitches. Back then, we fucked niggas up with crosses dangling from our necks, in the same suits niggastalked shit about. We were religious—not bitches. You’d think Q would have watched his mouth, considering my reputation, but he thought we were cool because I chopped it up with him and helped his momma out with a couple bills. His jokes might’ve been innocent, but I saw beneath the shit. He was trying to little boy me. Bitch me. And that would never sit well with me.
Jada and I walked up on the porch and dug around her purse for the key to the house. While she looked, I stood behind her, hands stuffed into my pockets, surveying the block. After a couple of seconds, she unlocked the door, opened it, and a stench hit me as soon as she did.
I pinched my nostrils, shook my head, and crossed the threshold to walk inside. The house was a mess. There were bottles, trash, and shit all over the place. The coffee table was littered with beer bottles, drug paraphernalia, unfinished food and a bunch of other shit. There were bottles of piss scattered around the living room, as if there wasn’t a working bathroom in this bitch.
“I can’t believe this shit,” mumbled Jada, stepping over a mountain of trash.
I could.
She paid professional cleaners to declutter and clean the house a couple of weeks ago. When she facetimed me, showing me the house after it was finished, I knew she was excited for nothing. I knew it would only be a matter of time before Johnny came back and fucked the house up like he always did. Jada didn’t want to admit it, but her childhood home had turned into one of the many crack spots around the hood.
“Daddy!” She yelled, calling out for a nigga that wasn’t around.
The house was too still.
Before she could walk around, I put my arm out, blocking her and stepped in front of her.
“Wait by the door. I’ll look for ‘em,” I told her, before walking away.
With a deep breath, shaking my head, I stepped over a few pieces of trash, walking around the small house. It was murky as hell around this bitch. Dust particles filled the air, needles, and crack baggies were scattered about too.
Glancing over my shoulder, I spotted her pacing with tears running down her face. She was looking down at her phone, probably getting ready to call the cleaners again. I couldn’t understand her fixation with this shit. She should have let it go. The house, the hope, and her piece of shit daddy too. But Jada wasn’t like that. She clung to things. I didn’t just know that because she had me buy her childhood home and constantly wanted to come out here and look for her father. I knew because she clung on to me. Not in a clingy, I always want to be around you way. But in a way that kept her in this relationship or whatever the fuck you want to call it, for longer than she should have.
I took care of her.
