Riding Dirty on I-95 (4 page)

“Hey,” he said to Mercy. “Let me ask you something.”

Oh, God, now what?
Mercy thought.

“Look, do y'all rent rooms by the hour?” he inquired.

“Nope, we don't.”

“Oh, I was asking because that's how they do up top where I'm from.”

“Nope, we don't do that,” Mercy said.

“Look, I need you to stop playing and look out for me for real, and I don't mean no Triple A discount. I need you to let me get a room for about two hours. I ain't really trying to pay the whole sixty-nine dollars for only two hours. How 'bout I give you thirty dollars?”

She thought for a minute about the money she needed for her car and hesitantly agreed. “Just two hours, right?”

“Yup, just two hours,” Chocolate Smooth assured her.

“Are you going to mess up the room?”

“Naw.” He shook his head.

“You gonna make up the bed right afterwards?”

He smiled and replied, “I got you.”

“Don't leave no trash, no nothing in that room,” Mercy said in an authoritative tone.

“Look, I got you, ma.”

Mercy paused. “Aight. Don't fuck this up, okay?”

“I got you, I'm telling you. Why I wanna fuck up a good thang? Me and you can help each other out.” He smiled as Mercy looked
over the list of vacant rooms. She handed him the key as he handed her the money.

“Two hours,” Mercy reiterated.

Chocolate Smooth winked.

Mercy looked at the thirty dollars in her hand, smiled, and then tucked it into her bra.
Chocolate Smooth was right
, she thought to herself.
Everybody's got a hustle. Why should I be any exception?

A monster had been unleashed. For that entire week not only did Mercy rent vacant rooms by the hour to Chocolate Smooth and others, but she took an even bigger risk and rented out vacant rooms for the entire night and pocketed the money. She made sure that the rooms were stocked with extra towels and other amenities. Since the hotel didn't have room service, she didn't worry about that. She had her hustle on lock.

On Friday she caught a cab to work so she wouldn't be late. She would have hated to get fired on the day she was going to take ownership of her new wheels. That night she purchased a 1982 yellow Chevy Chevette from Ms. Pat's cousin. She had to pay a crooked used-car salesman a hundred dollars to write her some thirty-day tags. Although the car was ugly as death walking, she drove it and it got her from Point A to Point B without her ever having to worry about being late again.

Mercy had gotten what she wanted, but just like any hustle, once that easy money came along, the shit was addictive. By the end of the following week she had money from the hourly rental of the rooms from Chocolate Smooth, as well as money she had pocketed for vacant rooms she had continued to risk renting out to others.

Now everybody in Richmond knew that if someone wanted to find a place where there were hustlers, the Ambassador was the hotel where they were all staying and dealing. That was the place the dealers made many sales and got plenty of pussy. Mercy was
able to establish a relationship with many of the hustlers. For those who did legitimately check in, she'd check them in under an alias and required no ID. They would always slide her something under the table for that. So if the police or a dealer's main squeeze was looking for him, they wouldn't get the information from the front desk. Also, if a hustler only needed the room for a few hours to cook up or bag up, if the price was right, Mercy hooked them up as well.

Over the next few months Mercy's funds began to grow. The day before her eighteenth birthday she was walking out of Rainbow Plus in Cloverleaf Mall looking for a birthday outfit for herself. Browsing through the racks she noticed the security guard staring at her.

“You need something from me? You see something over here you like?” she asked.

“No, not really, just wondering what's in that bag of yours,” the short stubby white security guard said, looking at the huge bootleg Coach bucket bag she was carrying on her shoulders.

“What the fuck you mean, motherfucker? You trying to say that I'm carrying this bag to boost some shit?”

“I didn't say it, you did.” He smiled like he was about to get a raise for that comment.

“Naw, boy toy, you don't even get an A for effort on that one.” Mercy smiled. “You picked the wrong girl out of a lineup.” She continued rummaging through the racks.

“Oh, yeah, then if you know what people like me are gonna think, why would you bring that big bag to the mall, then?” he asked.

“Why?” She chuckled and never looked away from the clothes as she searched for a good buy.

He waited for her answer. She moved around the rack, and he impatiently asked her again, “Now, why would you do that?”

When Mercy moved to the next rack over, she looked up at him. “Well, first off, because I can. The last time I checked I can bring a suitcase in this motherfucker if I want to; it's a free country. Next, I ain't commit a crime,” she said, pointing at him, “and I wish you would accuse me of committing one so I can sue the fuck out of you, the store, and the company you work for. And lastly, which is truly none of your fucking business”—she went into her bag—“I keeps me a large jar of Vaseline”—she pulled the Vaseline out—“and sneakers in this bag, in case the wrong bey-atch cross my path on the wrong day and she needs to get dealt with. So, basically, buddy, as long as I shop in this store, and especially in this ghetto mall, this here bag”—she pointed to the bag—“will be on my shoulder.”

The guard did not utter a word. Mercy had broke him down and not even raised her voice.

“So Mr. Toy Cop, understand: Stealing, that ain't me. Maybe killing, but never stealing, you heard,” she said as she strolled out of the store into the mall.

A few minutes later she ran into Amy, who was one of the city's biggest gossips and seemed to know everything about everybody in town.

“ 'Scuse me, ain't you Zurri's lil' sister?”

“Yup.” Mercy nodded with a smile although she hadn't seen her sister in years. When Zurri turned eighteen, she had promised to fight the system and get custody of Mercy, but she never did. For a while Zurri wrote to Mercy, giving her hope, but it had been several years since her last letter, when she'd told Mercy she was pregnant. Zurri's focus had then turned to survival; she had her own family to worry about with her baby coming.

Mercy missed her sister and wanted any kind of connection or relationship she could get. So hearing Zurri's name was like music to her ears.

“I knew you had to be,” Amy continued, “because y'all look just alike.”

“Everybody used to always say that when we were little.”

“Well, me and her used to hang out, and she always used to tell me about her lil' sister. You still in the system?” Amy asked.

“Nope, not really. I'm about to turn eighteen tomorrow, and then I'll be one hundred percent rid of them sons of bitches. Do you have my sister's number?” Mercy asked, hopeful to connect with her sister again.

“Her phone cut off, but I just heard there was some drama at her place, that she got to fighting and now Social Services over there looking for her daughter to take her away. Only Zurri won't tell them where the baby at.”

Hearing the words “Social Services” made every hair on Mercy's body stand up. “For what?” she asked, worried about her big sister and her niece even more. She had never seen the little girl, but if the Social Services people got their hands on her, she could disappear into the system and no telling what kind of terrible things might happen to her.

“You know how they do,” Amy said, sucking her teeth.

“Look, I know you don't know me, but please, I need you to help me. Please help me find my niece,” Mercy begged. “You know that we grew up in the system, and I can't let my niece grow up in the system, too. Please, I need you to help me.” Mercy's eyes began to tear up.

Peeping out the desperation in Mercy's eyes and in the tone of her voice, Amy said, “Don't worry. I'll help you, girl. Yo' sister is my girl, so I'm going to hook you up.” Amy put her hand on Mercy's shoulder like they had known each other forever.

They walked to the pay phone and Amy made some calls. “Look, you got some dough?” Amy asked Mercy as she covered the phone.

“How much?” Mercy asked, as if to say if she didn't have it, she'd get it from somewhere.

Amy replied, “Like a dove.”

“Yeah, I got it,” Mercy answered.

“Well, the girl who got the baby your sister's neighbor, said she'll watch your niece until we get there, but we gotta take her a bag of weed.”

Mercy agreed.

After Amy took Mercy to a weed spot to cop a twenty-dollar bag, they went to Zurri's neighbor's apartment. Mercy walked in the door and saw the cutest little three-year-old girl with her hair plaited in neat rows and sporting a matching denim jacket and jeans. The girl was playing with an old black Barbie doll with the hair all cut off.

Amy whispered the little girl's name to her.

“Hey Deonie, I'm your Aunt Mercy,” Mercy said. Deonie looked up at her shyly.

“I see you got your doll there. Want me to tell you a story about her?”

Deonie didn't say anything, but handed her the doll.

“See, this here Barbie used to be a fashion model, but then she got in with the wrong crowd,” Mercy began. Pretty soon Deonie had crawled up into her lap and was listening to Mercy, completely enthralled.

T
he next day Mercy called in sick to work so she could get her niece situated. She also visited the Jackson Ward projects to see Ms. Pat and get her advice.

Ms. Pat came to the door in her housecoat. She was a frail-looking woman with salt-and-pepper hair and looked like a sweet
little old grandma. Mercy's daddy had trusted Ms. Pat completely. Ms. Pat had even tried to get custody of Mercy and the other kids after Uncle Roland went to jail but never could since she was on disability and lived in the projects.

“How do people do it, Ms. Pat?” Mercy asked, settling down in Ms. Pat's living room with Deonie on her lap. “I've got to work, but who's gonna look after Deonie?”

“Don't you worry 'bout it. I'll look after her. But you need to live closer by. I'm gonna see 'bout getting you a place here in the project. There's a lady I know works at the housing authority, and she owes me a favor.”

“That might take a while,” Mercy said, handing Deonie a package of animal crackers.

“In the meantime, you can stay here with me,” Ms. Pat said, and went into the other room to fix up a place for Mercy and Deonie to sleep.

Mercy was grateful to Ms. Pat, who was better to her than her own sorry mother. Uncle Roland had gotten so disgusted with her mother, Pearl, when he found out she was running after any man with a few dollars in his pocket, even some of those who were known to associate with Nate's killer, Cat, that he'd taken his brother's favorite daughter home to live with him. Besides, the others were either too grown and out of control or had already been swept up in the system.

He'd called himself intervening, but he was a big-time drug dealer himself, and between the late nights, traveling, and living the fast life, she hadn't been much better off with him. Uncle Roland had put forth a good effort, but hell, he could barely take care of his own son, Roe, who was Roland's son by a trick. As soon as his child was born, Roland had taken his son and raised him himself. He'd had good intentions, but the only thing he could pass on to his son was the only thing he knew … the streets.

Roland's life had none of the structure that a young child needed. On his son's tenth birthday, Roland felt the only thing his son hadn't had and he was old enough for was a blow job. And on his twelfth birthday, he got him a shot of ass.

However, when Mercy came to live with them, it was different. Seeing firsthand the paths that many raunchy, no-good females take, and where they end up, he'd wanted Mercy to beat the odds. With her being the baby girl and her youngest brother already in and out of trouble, her uncle was very overprotective with her. He'd instilled the principles of the street life in her but had tried hard to keep her a lady. She'd only been with him for about a year when Uncle Roland caught a double homicide charge. He'd beat that, but a month later Roe caught a drug case, and both Roland and his son were sentenced to do a bit, leaving their little princess on the streets to fall victim to the system. Social Services sent her to her first foster family. And for the next few years she'd sampled all the shit that the system had to offer.

“Mercy,” Ms. Pat said, coming back in and interrupting Mercy's thoughts. “You know what today is?”

“No,” Mercy said.

“You're eighteen. You a free woman now. I made you a chocolate birthday cake.”

Deonie loved chocolate cake, and she started squealing and clapping. Mercy had completely forgotten it was her birthday. Then again, birthdays weren't something she really liked to remember, considering when a scheming motherfucker called Cat had killed her Daddy. She had heard that Cat was dead. She sincerely hoped so; otherwise she was likely to spend the rest of her life in prison if she ever saw him.