Hell's Diva (12 page)

The image of Lou was now dressed in a Catholic archbishop’s robe. The yellow and purple robe had gold crosses on the crest and Lou held a large, black Bible in his hands. He opened the Bible and looked at Mecca.

“Mecca, you ever heard the saying ‘vengeance is mine saith the Lord’?”

“Yeah, I have been to church before. Damn, I wasn’t always in the street,” Mecca countered, sounding aggravated.

“I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m not going to ask you why you’re so angry even in death, but,” Lou said loudly, “you’ve been angry all your life so you carried it with you to the other side,” Lou said, rubbing his palms together. “Now, I asked you about revenge. Don’t you think it’s rather odd that the creator says revenge is his, but he made it so humans would feel the urge to avenge themselves against their adversaries? Are you following me?”

Mecca looked at Lou confused and shrugged her shoulders.

“I figured you would do that,” Lou said. He began to pace back and forth. “It’s a catch-22, Mecca. It’s not fair, where is the mercy in that? You create something to be able to do as it feels, but you punish them for the choices you gave him. Is that love? No, it’s a game!”>

“Why are you telling me this? If you have issues with God or whoever, take that up with Him, Her, Them, but leave me alone!” Mecca barked.

Lou put his hand against his heart. “I’m not bothering you, Mecca, I’m trying to teach you something,” Lou replied.

“What good does it do me now? What is this knowledge going to do for me? I’m dead.”

“Mecca, knowledge is infinite. You never know what will become of you. Who knows what his greatness has in store for you?” Lou paused and smiled. “I’m just doing my job.”

Mecca picked Shamel up in her red Lexus and took him to Kings County Hospital, where he was stitched up. He received a hundred and three stitches for his face, and was released from the hospital the same night.

Shamel’s face was numb from the Novocain they used to put the stitches in. He could barely speak when Mecca drove back to East New York. He reclined in the passenger seat with a large gauze pad on the left side of his face. His whole face was swollen, and to anyone who knew him, he was unrecognizable.

“Who did this shit, Shamel? It was Tah, wasn’t it?” Mecca asked with the look Shamel had seen on her face when she went after Tamika. It was a look that made her seem like a different person, like when Bruce Banner got angry and was about to transform into the Hulk.

To Mecca’s surprise, Shamel shook his head and struggled when he replied, “It was those niggas Kaheem and Born.”

“You can’t be serious.” Mecca’s face turned into a look of disbelief.

“Yeah,” Shamel replied in a groggy voice.

“Your own cousins? Why the fuck would they…” Mecca banged on the steering wheel. “Niggas is real shiesty, Shamel. You treat them niggas like your little brothers. You did everything for them niggas!” Mecca wondered why when she called Kaheem’s house, his girl said she ain’t see him in a few days. When Mecca told the soldier of Shamel’s who came with her to pick up his truck what happened, he asked when the last time was that anyone had seen Kaheem and Born.

Mecca didn’t think anything of it at the time because she was so worried about Shamel. She thought maybe they were at some chick’s crib doing whatever. The last thing she would have thought was that they were involved in a kidnapping for ransom on their own cousin.
How grimy is that?
she thought.

The thought if it brought a lump up in Shamel’s throat. He fought to hold back the tears. His mind flashed back to when his cousins Kaheem and Born, both twenty years old now, came from Brownsville to stay with Shamel and his grandmother after their house burned down, killing their mother and their little sister, who was two years old.

Kaheem and Born were both fifteen years old when they came to stay with him. A lot of people thought they were twins, but they were really eight months apart. They were both out-of-control teens. They did everything together from crime to sharing women when it came to sex. Both of them did time in juvenile facilities for dozens of robberies around the city. Shamel introduced them to the drug game, thinking that if they made good money it would calm them down and stop them from committing petty robberies.

“It ain’t no money in that bullshit chain-snatching, sticking-up-corner shit,” Shamel would school them.

He eventually convinced them to join his team and he put them in charge of giving out product to the workers and collecting money. Since he knew they had a sweet tooth for violence, he gave them the positions, so if any of the workers messed up some of the money, Kaheem and Born enjoyed chastising the offender. Sometimes they would go too far and Shamel would have to intervene. When Kaheem and Born found out that Shamel was getting his product from a female, they began to think that Shamel was getting soft.

“Yo, son, Shamel get his work from that chick Mecca,” Kaheem said to Born.

“Word? How you know, son?”

“He told me,” Kaheem roared.

Born looked astonished. “That pretty-ass chick got work like that?”

“Yeah, and Shamel in love with her. He fucking her and the bitch got a man…” Kaheem snapped his fingers and continued. “Matter of fact, she fuck with Tah Gunz from Brownsville Houses. You know she originally from the ville.”

“I thought Shamel bust his gat? Fuck he doing working for a chick? She supposed to give everything to him and play her position,” Born said.

Kaheem shook his head with a disappointed look on his face. “Shamel got soft on us. I know the nigga fam and he looked out for us, but niggas gonna say we all work for the bitch and think something sweet about us. Something got to give, son.”

“So what up, son? Let’s do what we do best,” Born said with a mischievous grin on his face. Kaheem nodded in agreement with the same grin.

Shamel couldn’t believe that his own flesh and blood would do him so dirty, but the situation would definitely be handled. He was thankful that he had a ride or die chick like Mecca by his side, and knew if shit got sticky he could always turn to her for help.

“Don’t worry, Shamel, everything gonna be all right,” Mecca said, rubbing his thigh. Mecca looked over at Shamel and could see the pain in his eyes. Well, the one eye that was open. The other was swollen shut from the punches he took to the face by his kidnappers.

Shamel looked at Mecca for a few seconds, and then looked out the passenger window. “Word to my grandmother soul, I’m gonna kill them niggas, Mecca.”

Mecca put what she had to do for Ruby on hold to tend to Shamel while he healed. She drove over to his building every morning to make him breakfast in bed. She helped him dress and she cleaned his face and changed his gauze pad. To put him more at ease she would suck his dick and let him cum in her mouth. His ribs were sore so she laid him on his back and rode him.

Tah came over to her apartment twice a week and Mecca would treat him like a stranger. When he tried to have sex with her she would turn him down.

“I don’t know what that bitch Tamika got. You ain’t gonna be fucking me after you fucked her.”

Tah would accuse her of fucking Shamel and say that was the reason she didn’t want to have sex with him. Mecca would ignore him and Tah would leave. Eventually Mecca started seeing less and less of Tah, except when he collected money from his soldiers and copped coke off Mecca and took the consignment.

Mecca knew eventually Tah was going to be a problem. She figured Tah would eventually feel that if she was no longer his girl, he shouldn’t do business with her or look over her other spots in Brownsville, and that’s exactly what started to happen.

Mecca got the word that her spots in Langston Hughes and Tilden were constantly being robbed and no one knew who was doing the stick ups. When Mecca asked Tah about it, he simply said, “I can’t be in three places at one time. I’m saying you should put your boy Shamel in charge of those spots. Ain’t nobody doing it in my projects. Niggas respect who I be.”

When Mecca spoke to Shamel about it, Shamel knew exactly what Mecca knew. “He knows because he’s the one who got niggas doing it,” Shamel said.

“I ain’t been showing my face around the ville. Mu’fucka think that I’m on some high posty shit,” Mecca replied.

Shamel shook his head. “Nah, Mecca. Niggas know you a female and even though you bust your guns, niggas still can’t grasp the thought of a girl running a spot. Another strike is that you’re not out there on the front lines. Niggas respected your aunt so off the strength niggas went with the flow, but how long will you last just off the strength of who your aunt is? You aunt is not here so niggas don’t give a fuck no more.”

Mecca slammed her fist into her palm. “I’ma show these niggas I ain’t no soft-ass chick!”

Shamel grabbed Mecca’s hands in his, and then kissed her softly on the lips. “Chill, Mecca, you ain’t got to do nothing. That’s what I’m here for. I’m going to handle this. You my woman now and I ain’t gonna have you running around getting into no shootouts with niggas. I got this.”

Three weeks after the kidnapping of Shamel, as the swelling on his face disappeared, Shamel was back out on the streets. The scar on his face was still raw and pinkish, giving Shamel a menacing look. Shamel called Kaheem’s girlfriend and Kaheem answered the phone.

“Shamel, what up, son!” he bellowed, sounding as if he were happy to hear from his cousin.

“Ka, what up. Where you been, kid?”

“A yo, son, me and Born was out of town in B-More trying to get something going out there. There’s crazy paper out there, son,” Kaheem lied.

Shamel kept his cool and talked as if he didn’t know that it was his own cousins who kidnapped him and cut his face. “You heard what happened, right?” Shamel asked.

“Yeah, son. We gonna find out who did that foul shit and it’s on!” Kaheem said, trying to sound sincere and angry about what happened to Shamel. Shamel could tell that Kaheem covered the phone with his hand. He heard him mumbling in the background.

“Where Born at?” Shamel inquired, setting his plan in motion.

“Still in B-More. He fucks with some bird out there. Nigga act like he in love or something,” Kaheem chuckled.

“When he get back in town, y’all come see me, al right?”

“I’m saying if shit is back to normal. I’ll be back on the block tonight,” Kaheem replied while getting a stronger grip on his girlfriend’s hair as she sucked his dick.

“That’ll be good. Yeah, come through.”

When Mecca went to her mailbox a week later, she kind of expected Ruby’s response to be short and to the point, but Mecca wished Ruby would at least break things down more. Reading the response, Mecca knew her aunt was angry at her.

“There’s a proverb in the Bible, Mecca, that says, ‘Hell and destruction are never full: so the eyes of man are never satisfied’,” Lou quoted. He continued, “Never satisfied, how true that is,” Lou snickered. “Greed, greed, greed. Humans are greedy! How did you put up with conniving, low-down people and still feel that it was worth it?”

“You just don’t understand. I had to do what I had to do,” Mecca responded with candor.

Lou howled with laughter. “You’re wrong, I do understand. I understand that your whole life you’ve been surrounded by these types of people. Hate to have to say it to you, but your parents were those types of people too.”

“I wasn’t around them long enough for that,” Mecca growled, angry at Lou’s comment.

“That’s so unfortunate. All I’m saying is that you were raised to think that what you were doing was right, but at some point with all you were going through, you should have realized nothing good would come of that life. Your family was the perfect example of why you should have stopped.”

“Stopped and did what?” Mecca yelled.

“Let’s see.”

Shamel’s grandmother returned from her trip down South. Before she could share the news of how good of a time she had, and advise Shamel and Mecca to save up some money, buy land down there, and get away from these treacherous streets, she was concerned about the scar on Shamel’s face.

“Baby, what happened? How did you get that? Lord Jesus!”

“I was fixing a light at Mecca’s apartment and one of those florescent bulbs broke and cut my face,” Shamel lied, with Mecca cosigning his tale.

“You got to be careful. I bought you and your cousins some stuff back,” she said, digging in her black leather suitcase. Shamel watched his bowlegged grandmother walk to her suitcase slowly, as if her bones hurt. He figured her arthritis was getting worse. He acknowledged that for her eighty years of living, her dark chocolate skin, though wrinkled a little, made her look twenty years younger.

She still had pretty long hair, now gray, that reached beyond her shoulders when she didn’t have it in a bun. She always dressed as if she was going to church: skirts down to her knees, knee-high stockings with shoes that nurses wore, and a blouse buttoned up to the top. Shamel rushed over to help her open the suitcase.

“Thank you, baby. I brought y’all some shirts that are nice. They look as good as those expensive clothes y’all waste y’all money on. Y’all crazy with them ninety-dollar shirts and pants, and hundred-dollar sneakers.”

Shamel looked at Mecca, shrugging his shoulders as his grandmother pulled out multicolored, flannel, button-down shirts and some blue and black jeans. The kind they sold in Sears or gave you in prison.

“Ain’t they nice?” she asked, holding up a shirt, showing Shamel. “And look at these jeans. They just like the ones y’all wear and I only paid twenty dollars for the shirt and pants together! Clothes are cheaper in the south than up here! This city is so crazy I got to go, and so should y’all! Mecca, you’re a pretty girl. Ain’t no pretty girl like you need to be wasting her time in this crazy place. These guys have no respect for women up here. Down south they treat you like a lady, you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mecca replied.

Shamel’s grandmother handed him the clothes. “Go try them on, and give these to those two knucklehead cousins of yours. Those two are up to no good. Where they been? I ain’t seen them in a while before I left. Tell them I said don’t be calling me from no Rikers Island asking for bail. I’ll tell that judge to keep they little tails in there.”

Shamel threw the clothing on his bed. “Grandma, I’ll try them on later. I got to make a run!” Shamel yelled from his room. He walked out of his room and waved his hand to Mecca, signaling for them to leave.

“Okay, baby. Don’t forget to tell those knuckleheads I wanna see ’em.”

“I ordered the double cheeseburger, son!”

“Nah, nigga, I did. This your Big Mac!” Kaheem and Born argued in front of a McDonald’s on Broadway and Kosciusko Street in Bushwick. Kaheem held the McDonald’s bag in his hand while Born tried to reach in and grab the double cheeseburger.

“What difference does it make? Just come on!” Kaheem’s Puerto Rican girlfriend yelled while she folded her arms, trying to keep warm from the cold night air. Her cream complexion was red from the frigid wind. The black and red North Face kept her upper body warm but the tight-fitting Parasuco Jeans that gripped her heart–shaped, plump ass didn’t protect her from the cold.

“It’s cold as hell and you dumb-ass niggas wanna argue over some burgers. Kaheem, let’s go!”

Kaheem and Born both looked at her at the same time and in unison barked, “Shut the fuck up!”

“Y’all niggas need to get a life, for real.”

“Karmen, you get yourself a job and all of the sudden we gotta get our lives together. You got the nerve to ask Mecca to come work with you at this bullshit McDonald’s!” Kaheem grumbled while Born laughed.

“Some people change. Unlike y’all dumb asses y’all want to be in the streets forever. This shit don’t last forever, y’all gonna wind up in jail…”

Kaheem and Born finished the sentence with Karmen, “Or dead!”

“We heard it all before, Karmen. Come up with something new. Nothing last forever, man,” Kaheem said.

Karmen thought Mecca would at least give it a try. She and Mecca became friends when Kaheem brought Karmen to Shamel’s crib. They double-dated twice and Karmen and Mecca clicked. Karmen liked Mecca’s style. She knew Mecca was real and not like the fake chicks in her neighborhood who smiled in your face and gossiped behind your back.

After Dawn, Mecca told herself she would never get close to another chick like that. In fact, Mecca kept her circle extremely small. Shamel and her aunt. Yet, she could not help but be drawn to Karmen. Karmen talked about a lot of things besides men and materialistic things. Karmen had goals. She wanted to save up money and open a restaurant that served soul food and Spanish food. She wanted to eventually leave New York after opening up a chain of restaurants. She loved to cook. She worked in McDonald’s to save up money to go to culinary school to become a chef.

Mecca wondered why somebody like Karmen would be in a relationship with a low-life like Kaheem. She figured there was somebody for everybody. Karmen even suggested that she and Mecca go into business together. Mecca would agree with her, but she thought that Karmen was just a dreamer and it would never happen. As long as she was with Kaheem, he would do nothing but bring her down. A lot of times, Mecca wanted to tell Karmen about what she thought, but it wasn’t her business. Maybe Karmen knew something she didn’t.

“Whatever, Kaheem, I’m walking. Y’all can argue over some burgers all night if you want, I don’t care,” Karmen said, starting to walk up Broadway under the elevated train tracks that the J train ran on.

As the train rode by, Karmen looked back to see if Kaheem and Born were behind her. She sucked her teeth when she noticed them still arguing over the burgers. Karmen heard footsteps behind her when she turned. A man who appeared to be a homeless bum bumped into her.

“Damn, watch where you going,” Karmen snapped.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the man said gravely.

Karmen looked him up and down, studying his dirty, ripped-up jeans, old gray sheepskin that looked like a mangy dog, and some old beat-up New Balances that were caked in dirt. Karmen looked at the man’s face. It didn’t fit the way he appeared. His face looked clean, when he spoke he showed pearly white teeth, and he was clean-shaven. To her, he appeared to be attractive and no older than twenty-five. As Karmen walked passed him, the man turned around and grabbed her from the back in a bear hug.

“What you doing?” Karmen screamed as a car screeched to a halt and the man, who was too strong for Karmen, lifted her head and walked toward the car.

“Get off me! Kaheem!”

By the time Kaheem and Born heard Karmen scream and they took off running toward her, she was already in the back of a black MPV minivan that screeched off. Kaheem pulled his black .357 Magnum and shot at the vehicle until he emptied his gun. “Karmen!” he screamed, watching the back of the MPV disappear into the cold night.

In Mecca’s East New York apartment, Shamel’s cellular phone rang while he sat in front of Mecca’s fifty-two-inch screen television playing Super Nintendo. He answered after the first ring.

“Yo!”

The voice on the phone answered indistinctly, “She said she’ll meet you in Queens.”