Eastside (7 page)

She nodded. “For real! So, what are you doing out here?”

He leaned against the roof of the car and peered inside. “I stay out here now. I live with my aunt.”

Her eyes flew open wide. “Oooh, for real? Then you can come to my job and kick it with me.”

“Yeah, you know I'm down for that. Say, Tamika, you never gave me your phone number either.”

“There are a lot of things that I ain't gave you, that I'm gonna give you.”

“Girl, shut your hot tail up!” Varika, Tamika's sister, shouted from the driver's seat.

Tamika opened the glove box, grabbed a pen, and wrote her number down on a loose piece of paper. She handed the paper to Travon.

Travon examined the number and smiled. “I'm gonna call you tonight. What time do you get off?”

“At ten. But I won't get home until about ten thirty, so call me about eleven.”

Travon nodded. “Okay.”

“So, where are you going now?”

He stared down the street. It looked even longer now than it did five minutes ago. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. “To my aunt's house.”

“Do you want a ride?” Tamika asked.

“Yeah.” Travon backed away from the door, giving Tamika room to open it.

She climbed out of the tiny car, lifted the latch on the seat, and pulled it forward. Travon moved the seat belt out of the way and clumsily climbed into the backseat.

“Thanks,” Travon said to Varika.

Tamika climbed back inside the car and closed the door.

“I'm gonna show you where I live now, so don't forget,” Travon told Tamika. “You know, just in case you want to come and visit me late one night.”

Travon and Tamika laughed, while Varika smiled and shook her head.

“Bust a left, then a right, and then go straight down until I tell you to stop,” Travon told Varika.

Tamika turned toward Travon, and patted her sister on her shoulder. “Oh, Tre, this is my sister, Varika.”

Travon nodded. “What's up, Varika?”

“Hi.” Varika smiled at Travon through the rearview mirror and gave a slight wave. She was the mirror image of her younger sister.

“Tre, one day I'm going to kidnap you, and I'm going to hold you hostage for days,” Tamika told him.

“You know that you don't have to kidnap me, I'll go anywhere with you, girl,” Travon told Tamika. He turned and tapped Varika on her shoulder. “Right up here where this burgundy house is.”

Varika pulled up to Aunt Vera's house. Tamika climbed out of the car and lifted the seat up so that Travon could climb out of the back.

“I see your work, kinfolk!” Darius shouted from the porch.

Tamika smiled, grabbed Travon's head, and then pulled him close and stuck her tongue in his mouth. Startled, Travon froze. He had kissed girls in the Courts before, but none as pretty, or forward, as Tamika. He had had a crush on her since kindergarten. And now they were kissing.

Tamika slowly pulled her lips away from Travon's, quickly climbed back inside of the car, and ordered her sister to drive away quickly. Travon could hear them giggling as he stood near the curb in a trance-like state, watching as the car rounded the corner and disappeared.

A familiar voice called out from the porch. “What's up, Blood?”

It was a voice Travon knew all too well; a voice that brought goose bumps and raised the hairs on his arms. “Shit,” he whispered, as he turned toward the porch. He hadn't noticed his Aunt Chicken's car in the driveway. Now his cousin Capone walked out of the front door, followed by his other cousin, Romeo. Capone was one year older; Travon and Romeo were the same age.

“I hope they go home soon,” Travon whispered beneath his breath.

“What's up, Tre?” Romeo asked.

“Nothin', kinfolk,” Travon replied. He forced a smile and hugged Romeo. When finished, he turned and hugged Capone.

“You know we served them niggaz after we heard what they did to you,” Capone told Travon.

“Oh, yeah?” Travon was surprised. Although knowing his cousins, he knew that he should not have been. They irritated him to death, but they also stuck together. Theirs was a close family. In his opinion, too close.

“Hell yeah, Blood!” Romeo shouted. “We took they motherfuckin' hats to 'em!”

Aunt Chicken walked out of the front door.

“Tre, baby, come and give your Aunt Chicken a hug,” she told him, spreading her arms wide.

Travon dragged himself up the porch steps and embraced his aunt tightly.

After hugging him, she leaned back slightly and stared into his eyes. “Are you all right?”

Travon nodded. “Yeah, I'm okay.”

“That's good. Now come on in here and call your mother. She's been worried sick about you. They been shootin' over in them damn Courts again.” Chicken shook her head and frowned. “I don't know why Elmira insists on staying out there, when she can come and live with me, or Vera, or Gina, or a hundred other people. She's just so damn prideful and stubborn!”

She pounded her two tiny fists together. “Times like this, I just get mad at her!”

Travon walked inside, lifted the telephone, and dialed his mother's number.

“Hello?”

“Momma, it's me, Tre. What's up? Chicken said that you was worried about me.”

“Oh, baby, I just wanted to hear your voice, and make sure that you was all right. V said that you left early this morning, and that she hadn't seen you since. Plus, Miss Martha told me that they had a great big old shoot-out over here earlier.”

“Oh,” Travon said, hesitating for several moments, before finally regaining his composure. “Naw, I'm doing fine. I just ran around the corner to kick it for a while.”

“Well, they say that Quentin got shot in the stomach, and that Smoke got grazed in the head. The bad part is, Miss Elly's granddaughter got killed.” Elmira sniffled, trying to hold back her tears. “I know what that woman is going through right now.”

Travon could not speak.

“The police are saying that it was them Crip boys that did it, and that it was just a gang shooting. Them the same group a boys that they say shot your brother, and they ain't got them boys yet. They need to close that damn East Terrace down, and put all them boys in jail! Oooh, Tre, baby, it's on TV right now! Channel Five, hurry, baby!”

Travon lifted the remote and turned the television on. He quickly flipped to Channel Five News and turned up the volume.

The news showed footage of Quentin lying on a stretcher and throwing up gang signs as the paramedics loaded him into an ambulance. The news cameras then cut to Smoke One, who was seated on the curb, holding a large blood-stained bandage to his forehead.

“Another shooting on the city's Eastside occurred today,” the anchorman announced to the audience. “This one happened in the city's Wheatley Courts housing projects. It left two wounded, and one child dead.”

The camera cut to footage of a woman holding a little girl's limp body, while screaming hysterically.

“Tre,” Elmira called to her son over the telephone. “Tre.”

“Hold on, Momma, let me cut the TV down.” Travon lifted the remote control and silenced the television. “Okay, I'm here.”

“Boy, you say something when I'm talking to you,” Elmira told him.

“Momma, the night Too-Low died, he told me to hold some money for him. I been holding it, but…Momma, I know that he would want you to have it. It's enough to buy you a car. You could work the day shift, and do home visits, and make enough money to get out of there. Momma, I could move back home and help out, and you wouldn't have to take the bus no more. We could probably be out of the Courts in a couple of months.”

“Tre, honey, all this time you and your brother been sticking money in my purse, and pretending like I didn't know, what did you think that I was thinking? Did you think that I believed in the Good Fairy? Tre, I know that you mean well, but I don't want your brother's money. Buy you a car, buy you some school clothes, or take your Aunt Vera out to eat. Have fun with it, it's yours now.”

“But, Momma! You could buy you a car, and you wouldn't have to ride the bus at night, and then have to wait all morning until they start running again!”

“It's dope money, Tre!” Elmira shouted. “It's poison! I don't want your brother's blood money. I have never complained about riding the bus, not once, have I, Tre?”

“But, Momma.”

“Tre!” Elmira cut him off. “Do you know what I did with your brother's money?”

Travon remained silent.

“I saved it! I saved all of it, and I used it to bury him. I paid for his funeral with it. The same money that he got from putting people in the ground, I used to put him in the ground!” Elmira shouted. She began sobbing heavily. “I took his death money, and I paid it to the funeral home, and I buried my child! I buried my child,” she repeated softly.

“I'm sorry, Momma,” Travon whispered. “I'm sorry.”

Elmira sniffled. “Don't be sorry, baby, just do something for yourself. That part of our lives is over now, Tre. Now go on with
your
life and do something for yourself. If you really want to help Momma, then go to school and graduate. Become a doctor, or a lawyer, or something. Make me proud.”

“But I want to help you now.”

“Baby, I know, and I love you for it. If you want to help that much, then go to school in the daytime, and get a job working after school. We'll open us an account together, and we'll both put money into it. We'll use it to buy a car, so I can work in the daytime and get my ass outta these Courts. Then you can come and live with me again. How does that sound?”

“It sounds good,” Travon told her.

“All right, baby, I got to go and get ready for work. But I'll talk to you later.”

“Okay.”

“'Bye,” Elmira whispered softly. “I love you, baby.”

“Love you, too.”

Travon placed the telephone receiver down into its base. With his thoughts still on the conversation with his mother, he rose from the living room couch and slowly walked to the front door. He stood silently, peering out of the dark screen door, not ready to be seen or partake in the conversation between his Aunt Chicken and the others, who were now seated around the front porch.

“Anybody ever tell you that you are finer than a motherfucka, Mrs. C?” Lil Fade asked.

“Boy, go on!” Chicken replied. “I'm old enough to be your mother.”

“Say, they don't make women like you no more, Mrs. C,” Lil Bling told her. He lifted his bottle of beer to his lips and took a long swig from it. “You can cook, you clean, you work, you stay in shape, and you down.”

“What, you think that just because I got kids, I'm supposed to be an old fogey? I know what's up.” Chicken smiled, and walked to where Big Pimpin was standing. He had both hands hidden behind his back. Chicken wrapped both arms around him, as if she were about to give him a seductive embrace, and then stepped back, holding the joint that he had been trying to hide. Holding it in the air like a cigarette, she turned and sashayed away from him, switching her curvaceous hips. On the way back to her spot on the porch, she lifted the joint to her full red lips and drew from it.

“Momma!” Romeo called out to her. “What are you doing smoking weed?”

“I smoke weed all the time. Or at least whenever I can steal it from your brother's hiding spot in the backyard.”

Capone's cheeks flushed red with embarrassment, and he quickly shifted his gaze to the ground.

“Haaa, Mrs. C is down, boy!” Lil Fade shouted.

“Say, Mrs. C, I wish my moms was down like you,” Lil Bling told her.

“Where is that little girl you was talking to?” Chicken asked. “What was her name? Niesha? I like her, she is so sweet, and cute too.”

Lil Bling shook his head. “Man, she be trippin', Mrs. C. She don't want to give me none. She talkin' about wait until she thinks it's right.”

Chicken leaned back against the porch banister. “Why should she? All those girls you be messin' with. Boy, what if you gave her something, or got her pregnant? You ain't got no job, no house, no nothing.” Chicken pointed toward his thick gold herringbone necklace. “And that little hustle you got, it ain't gonna last too long.”

Chicken waved her well-manicured hand at Lil Bling, dismissing him. “Boy, you crazy, that ought to be the one you want to keep. That tells you that she ain't no hot-tail little girl.”

Lil Bling nodded. “Yeah, Mrs. C, I know you right. I'll just hang on to her, and dip with somebody else.”

Chicken slapped him across his shoulder. “Boy, that ain't what I said!”

The boys gathered around the porch broke into laughter.

“Mrs. C got all the answers,” Lil Fade declared.

Chicken puffed on the joint, and exhaled seductively into the air. “I'm thirty-six years old, with a nineteen-year-old daughter, an eighteen-year-old daughter, a seventeen-year-old son, and a sixteen-year-old son. Child, I do not have all of the answers. As you grow older, you'll make mistakes, but you'll learn from them.”

Travon opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. If his Aunt Chicken wanted to play the wise old sage, then he had a problem that he wanted to present to her.

“Aunt Chicken, Momma be trippin',” Travon announced. “I tried to give her some money that Too-Low left, but she won't take it. Can you talk to her for me?”

“Tre, baby, your momma is very proud, and very stubborn,” Chicken told him. “She's been that way since we was little girls. If she don't want to take the money, ain't nothing I can say that will change her mind.”

Travon shook his head and looked down.

“Tre, the only thing that I can tell you is to get a job and give her the money little by little, like you're getting it from your paycheck,” Chicken added.

Travon lifted his head and smiled.

“El don't have to know how much you make, or where the money is really coming from, sweetie,” Chicken continued. “Hell, you can just tell her that you got a job, and give it to her little by little.”

Travon squinted and peered off into the distance.
Damn
, he thought, she really did have all the answers.

Lil Fade turned up the volume on the CD player, and Chicken quickly made her way onto the grass, where she began dancing.

“Say, Mrs. C,” Lil Fade called out. “Anybody ever tell you that you look like Vanessa Williams' identical twin?”

“Child, Vanessa's titties and ass ain't as big as mines,” Chicken replied.

“Momma! You need to cut that shit out!” Romeo yelled.

Chicken smiled devilishly. “It's the truth.”

Travon seated himself on the porch banister and examined his Aunt Chicken. Today, she was wearing tight-fitting, low-cut, faded blue jeans, red furry slippers, and a red half-shirt that exposed her tight, muscled midsection. Her sandy hair was pulled back into a long, silky ponytail, and her natural green eyes sparkled like emeralds every time the sun struck them. For the first time in his life, Travon realized just how beautiful his Aunt Chicken really was. And as she began dancing and moving around provocatively to the booty-shaking song that was playing on the radio, Travon came to one more conclusion. His Aunt Chicken really was fine as hell.

“Damn!” Lil Fade cried out, watching Chicken dance.

“Damn!” Big Pimpin agreed.

“Damn!” Lil Bling shook his head.

Travon saw a different side of his aunt that evening. It was a side that had always been there, but one that he had paid little attention to. She really was down, he thought. She was cool, understanding, and eternally youthful. She was someone he could trust, someone he could talk to, someone who would listen, and understand, and have his best interest at heart. A new level of respect was found that evening, as well as a new ally. Aunt Chicken was the shit.