Christmas in the Hood (13 page)

“What about my car?” she asked. Maybe her purse and the money were in her car.

“Hell if I know,” Noelle replied. “I didn’t see your car and believe me I looked.”

“What am I going to do?”

Noelle stood up from her chair and questioned her mother one last time. She had to know what was going on so that she could protect Paris if necessary.

“Mom, you are going to tell me what’s going on and you’re going to tell me right now.”

Roberta’s hand shook as she lifted her coffee mug to her lips. After taking one sip bile rushed from her stomach to her throat. It took everything she had not to vomit on the table in front of her daughter. The back of her throat burned, but she managed to take a deep breath and swallow.

“Get it together, Mom and start explaining.”

“I … uh … I borrowed some money. Christmas is coming up and … and I wanted to buy you two presents.”

“Cut the bullshit. How much money, Mom?”

“Ten … no, twenty thousand … maybe.”

“What! Twenty thousand? There’s no way you can pay that back. What the hell were you thinking?”

Noelle grabbed her midsection to steady herself from the shock of it all. Where was her mother going to get twenty thousand dollars?

“What happened to the money?”

“I don’t remember,” Roberta whispered. “I know you don’t believe me, but I’m telling the truth. I don’t remember. I was stoned, okay. I was stoned!”

“Think dammit!” Noelle yelled. “What happened to the god-damn money?”

“I just needed a little something to take the edge off, Noelle. Things have been so hard lately, and I just wanted to relieve a little stress. I had the money when I went to get something. It was in my purse. My car keys, too. I don’t remember after that,” she confessed.

Roberta’s entire body began to spasm, she was shaking so hard. For the first time in her life she was scared. Terrified, actually.

Noelle shook her head in disgust.
Twenty thousand dollars. Unfuckingbelievable!

“So you got high and your purse was stolen,” Noelle reasoned.

“I guess.”

“And your car,” Noelle added.

“He’ll kill me, Noelle. You have to help me get that money back. You have to.”

“Mom, go to hell.”

“How can I go somewhere I already am, Noelle? Tell me, since you know it all. How?”

Chapter Five

N
oelle walked into Focal Point Barbershop twenty minutes late. Her client had already called to say that he’d be late as well, so she didn’t feel too bad. It had already been one hell of a morning. She couldn’t stop thinking about her mother’s twenty-thousand-dollar debt.

She hung up her coat on the chrome coatrack then stepped around men’s outstretched feet as they sat on the wooden benches waiting for their turn and watching ESPN’s
SportsCenter.
The air was filled with the smell of paint. A fresh coat of sunny yellow, with cleverly placed accent stripes of forest green and gold, covered the walls. The shop looked cozy and comfortable.

“What’s up, Noelle,” Terrence called out as she passed his station to get to her own. Terrence owned Focal Point and the boutique next door but still cut hair. He was cool toward everyone. He had to be if he wanted to keep a good staff and clientele in the shop.

“Nothin’ good, that’s for damn sure.”

“Yo, my boy left outta here tighter than a mug yesterday. You did a good job, yo,” Terrence told her.

“Thanks, T.”

Just as Noelle got her supplies situated at her station, her client, Marcus, walked into the shop.

“Hey, Marcus. How are you today?”

“I’m straight. I’ll be better when I get this bush of mine braided, though. I can’t be lookin’ all crazy in front of the ladies.”

“I hear you. Have a seat in my chair.”

Noelle took a deep breath and went to work parting his hair
and plaiting it. She was trying like hell to clear her mind and focus, but her mother’s tear-streaked face kept popping up every couple of minutes. She couldn’t shake the image of her mother crying at the dining room table and mumbling over and over again that she was going to die. Even though she knew she shouldn’t give a damn about her mother, she still couldn’t get that shit out of her mind and her heart. After all that had happened, Noelle still felt as if she owed it to her mother to help. After all, the bitch did birth her.

But so fucking what! You deserve to have a good life. You’re not your mother.

Thoughts raced through Noelle’s mind quickly. She didn’t know what she would do. But in the end, she was afraid that she did know. In the end, she knew that she would help her mother. No matter what.

“Yo, T, have you seen these before? These joints are tight,” Marcus called out, his voice snapping Noelle out of her working trance.

She looked up and saw Marcus holding a new pair of Nikes in his hand. The bootlegger who brought them in was confident that he’d unload them easily. He was a cocky young cat with cornrows, a tight shape up, and designer everything. He was obviously doing well at his profession of boosting merchandise.

“Those are nice,” Terrence commented, and set his clippers down to take a closer look at the shoes.

“They a buck-fifty in the stores but I’ll give ’em to you, yo, for seventy-five. That’s half price,” the bootlegger offered.

“You better get ’em, son,” Terrence told Marcus. “And they are size tens. Scoop ’em up before someone else does.”

“All right, I’ll take ’em,” Marcus told the bootlegger.

“I also got CDs and DVDs,” the bootlegger said.

“I’m good, man. Just the shoes.”

Just like that, the bootlegger made seventy-five dollars. There was no telling how much stuff he had “acquired” and was now selling in all the downtown barbershops. A good bootlegger made bank. Period.

“Yo, T, how much does he really make in a day?” Noelle asked Terrence.

“Yo is ’bout his shit,” Terrence informed her. “He just bought a brand-new BMW fresh off the lot. Yo makes bank fo’ sho.”

“How much longer, Noelle, ’cause now I gotta go buy a shirt to match my new kicks,” Marcus asked, interrupting Noelle’s thoughts once again.

“Fifteen minutes,” she replied.

Noelle continued plaiting Marcus’s hair all the while wondering how hard it would be to boost men’s clothing. And how much money could she make, and how fast?

Chapter Six

R
oberta pulled on an old gray sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. If she could just get a little something, she would be in good shape. She had to come up with a plan to pay Carlos back. But how?

The mortgage company had left a message on her cell phone to say that her refinancing the house wouldn’t be possible after all.
Apparently the late payments she’d made had really messed up her credit. Carlos wasn’t going to accept that. The company apologized and said that they hoped she had a good holiday. How was she going to have a good holiday with no money? Carlos didn’t give a shit about what time of year it was. He would kill her if Jesus himself stood by as a witness. All Carlos cared about was that she paid him his money.

Dammit, she needed a hit. First things first.

Roberta bypassed Noelle’s room and went straight to Paris’s door and opened it. She easily found the bright pink pig with purple polka dots on it in her daughter’s underwear drawer. It was one of those ceramic piggy banks that had a horizontal slot on top, but no way to get the money out other than breaking it.

So Roberta did what any junkie would do. She slammed her daughter’s piggy bank on the corner of her nightstand. Coins and bills fell out, and Roberta scooped them up, smiling as if she had struck gold. She counted the bills quickly then added up the coins. Thirty-seven dollars and forty-three cents.

It was enough. Enough to hold her until she could figure out a way to get more money later. At least if she got a little something she could come up with a plan to get Carlos his money.

She had already come up with one good-ass idea. But that would take Noelle’s cooperation, and she didn’t think her daughter would help her at all. Not like before. They’d been closer before—before the drugs.

Paris, on the other hand, was the perfect age. Maybe … just maybe …

Roberta left the house quickly and started walking since her car was still missing. She didn’t care, though. All she could focus
on at the moment was that weightless, floating feeling she would get with her first hit. She wished that feeling lasted forever.

A green older-model minivan slowed to her walking speed and kept pace with her for several steps. She looked over once, didn’t see anyone she recognized, and kept walking. Roberta didn’t even get alarmed when a man jumped out of the minivan’s sliding door and approached her.

“You looking for this?” the man asked her, and held out a crack pipe.

She looked into his face as if he were an angel sent from God to help her. He knew exactly what she needed when she needed it. That was surely divine intervention.

“Oh, thank you,” Roberta replied.

“Come on, get in,” he coaxed. “I’ll give you a private party in the van.”

Roberta’s smile grew even wider. This was her lucky day. Things were definitely going to change for the better.

She climbed into the minivan, and, as soon as the door slammed shut, she realized her mistake. Carlos sat in the middle row of seats, smiling in her face, along with his cousin from Alabama, a driver she didn’t recognize, and her new friend. Roberta pulled on the door handle, but the doors were already locked. She tried to unlock the door manually, but Carlos grabbed her by the arm and flung her into the last row of seats beside him.

“How you feelin’, Bobbie,” Carlos crooned as he smoothed down the hair around her face.

“I’m okay, ’Los. Thanks for asking.”

Roberta tried to remain calm and still the shaking that was inevitable from the combination of her craving and her fear. The
fact that Carlos showed up meant she was in deep shit. She was either going to be really hurt or dead. She didn’t know which one would be better, truth be told.

“You want this real bad, don’t you, Bobbie?”

Carlos held out the crack pipe with a lighter and watched Roberta’s eyes widen and glaze over. He used to like Bobbie. But she should never, ever have fucked with his money.

“That’s okay, ’Los. I’m fine.”

That was the toughest statement she had ever made. Roberta wanted to light that pipe very badly. She literally twitched at the thought of the pipe touching her lips. God, she needed a hit.

“Come on, girl. My treat.”

Carlos held the flame to the pipe and set the tip of the mouthpiece right on Roberta’s lip. She shut her eyes at first trying to resist, but the temptation was too strong.

Roberta closed her mouth around the pipe and experienced true bliss.

“Have at her,” Carlos told his cousin as they traded places in the backseat.

His cousin positioned Roberta on her knees so her ass faced him in the middle of the seat and shoved her facedown into the seat. She saw bits and pieces of food crumbs buried in the crevices of the upholstery. She couldn’t seem to make herself care. Roberta had what she really needed, and it was wonderful.

He slid her baggy jeans down over her hips and got even more excited when he realized she wasn’t wearing any panties. Freeing himself quickly, he spread Roberta’s butt cheeks and shoved his dick inside her ass.

Roberta’s brief intake of breath was the only indication she
gave of her discomfort. She would have been in greater pain had she not just had a hit.

He came immediately, then heard Carlos and the other two guys laughing at him.

“So you’re a two-minute brother,” Carlos joked.

“Hell, ’Los, I ain’t never fucked a woman in the ass before,” he drawled in his lazy southern accent. “That shit was supertight. Like I was fuckin’ a virgin. I had to nut or lose my damn mind, ’Los.”

“Where to, ’Los,” the driver asked.

“Go back to Roberta’s house. Since she can’t pay back the twenty-two thousand, three hundred dollars she owes me, we’ll wait for someone that will.”

Chapter Seven

N
oelle walked through downtown Baltimore going into store after store. She was trying to work up enough courage to walk into one and actually steal something. She had never stolen anything before in her life. But then again she had never needed twenty grand before either.

Noelle entered another men’s store and saw only one female cashier in the entire store. And luck would have it that the cashier was completely entertained by the man who was trying to holla at her. She hadn’t even seen Noelle walk in.

Noelle went to a rack with some very expensive men’s shirts that were currently hot on the streets. She slid one, then two
shirts off of hangers and stuffed them into her oversized gym bag. Just for good measure she placed the two empty hangers on the floor beneath the rack so it wouldn’t be obvious that shirts were missing. She turned and headed for the door, but stopped suddenly when she heard the cashier’s voice.

“Can I help you with anything?”

Noelle took a deep breath and turned around slowly. She prayed that she didn’t look guilty. “No, thanks. Just out Christmas shopping.”

“Well, yell if you need anything,” the cashier said, then promptly went back to talking to the man, a big smile on her face.

Even though her heart was pounding, Noelle walked out of the store as casually as possible. She had gone to one of the more expensive stores that didn’t use antitheft devices on their clothing. Stupid on their part, but good for her.

Once she had gotten a good distance away from the store, she took a deep breath. She had done it. The shirts had a ticket price of ninety dollars. She could sell them for fifty at the shop and make a quick hundred. She thought she would feel bad about stealing, but she was numb. Numb to everything except the need to come up with the twenty grand.

Noelle reached into her bag and ripped the price tags off the shirts, but kept the designer tags intact. She walked back to the barbershop. She had thirty minutes before she had to pick up Paris from school. She could unload the shirts by then. She had to.