The California Saga (13 page)

 

 

“Why the fuck isn't anybody answering their gotdamn phone!” I said to no one in particular as I waited for the cab driver to pull up to Norfolk City Jail. I'd been calling Touch and Sasha both since I'd been released and couldn't reach either of them.

Since this was my first offense and my charge wasn't major, the magistrate had agreed to let me go on a personal release bond. Calico, on the other hand, wasn't so lucky. I was able to find out that he didn't get a bond at all. Just like Calico had said when we first met, I didn't know what the fuck to do to get a nigga out of jail. That's one reason I needed to get with Touch, so I could find out my next move.

I was ecstatic when the cab pulled up. I walked to the cab like a woman with a broom stuck up her ass. I still had the plastic bag full of ecstasy pills in my pussy, and it was really beginning to feel uncomfortable. I gave the cab driver my home address and made myself comfortable in the back seat. I wasn't even trying to go to the car impound right then to pick my truck up. I felt disgusting. I reeked of jailhouse funk. Three hours in jail had really taken a toll on me, and all I wanted to do was go home and shower.

I was relieved when I finally pulled up to my home. I paid the cabbie and rushed in the house.

I turned my shower water on so that it was hot as hell and got undressed. I shook my head as I pulled the bag of
X
pills from below.
What the fuck am I doing?
I opened the bag and poured out its contents into the toilet then urinated afterwards. “Fuck this!” I said aloud. I flushed the toilet then hopped in the shower.

I exhaled as the hot water from the shower ran across my body, rinsing away all the drama from the hours before. I reflected back to the moment I realized the cops were behind me. It was like second nature when I took those pills and pushed them inside me. Shit, I didn't know I had it in me. In that case Calico could eat his words about me not being a ride-or-die chick. Hell, if that wasn't a gangtress move, I didn't know what was. But the fucked-up part about it is, now that I'd proven my status, I had no idea what was going to happen with Calico. I'd put in the work, but with his arrest, shit was looking dim, like there might not be a reward for me.

It was episodes just like this that made me remember why dope boys were never on the top of my list. Not only was their money not long enough, but shit, the lifestyle wasn't secure enough. Too much risk.

Needless to say I was tired as hell from everything that I had been through. I desperately wanted to speak to Touch, but since I couldn't get in contact with him, I figured that the smartest thing to do was to just lay my ass down in the bed and get some rest. I needed some sleep, so I could best figure out what the fuck had just happened, and what the fuck I was going to do next.

I crawled in my California king-sized bed. My green satin sheets never felt so good as I got comfortable beneath them. Within a matter of minutes, I was out cold and getting some much-needed sleep.

About two hours later, I was awakened by what sounded like someone knocking on my front door. I woke up disoriented and confused. Although I felt like I had been hibernating for two days or some shit, the clock said 2:30
P.M.
, so I knew that I had only been sleep for a few hours.

“What the fuck?” I barked as I stepped into my slippers and made my way downstairs to see who was banging on my door like they had lost their fucking mind.

My head was throbbing from having woken up so quickly, but that didn't stop me from venting the major attitude that I had. I didn't even bother to ask who it was at my door. Instead, I unlocked both locks and flung the door open.

“Do you have a gotdamn problem or something? Banging in my fucking door like you done lost your damn mind?”

There were two dudes standing at my door. One of them was big, black, and ugly, and reminded me a lot of the Notorious B.I.G. The other dude was short and stocky like a running back.

The short stocky dude asked, “Yo, where Calico at?”

Without responding to his question, I squinted my eyes and tried my hardest to figure out, had I ever seen either of those two dudes before.

“Ma, did I fucking stutter? I asked you where the fuck is Calico at?”

“What are you talking about?” My headache had suddenly disappeared, and my heart rate picked up.

The fat, ugly dude remarked, “She playing games.”

At that point something told me to just slam the door and lock it shut and try to get to my gun that was locked upstairs. But when I attempted to close the door, the short, stocky dude prevented it from closing by sticking his foot in the way. Instantly I ran as fast as I could, trying to make it to my bedroom.

“Ugggh!” I screamed after having a fistful of my hair grabbed from the back, stopping me dead in my tracks, and being violently yanked to the ground. “Get the fuck off of me!” I screamed as I tried to get back up.

“Shorty, calm the fuck down!” The short dude put one of his white Nike Air Force One sneakers to my throat and applied pressure.
Click-click.
Now with a gun cocked to my head, he continued talking. “I'm gonna ask you one more time—Where the fuck is Calico?”

Seeing my life flash before my eyes, I knew I had to speak up or else lose my life. This dude definitely seemed like he had the heart to pull that trigger. “Okay, okay, just don't kill me.”

The dude gave in and released all of the pressure that he had been applying to my neck.

I started to blab, my heart still racing, “Calico was here, but he got locked up last night.”

I knew I had broken the first and most important rule of the streets by running my mouth, but fuck that! This was the first time that I had actually had a gun put to my head. A bitch wasn't trying to die.

The big dude said, “She lying!”

“I swear to God, last night I was with Calico at the strip club, and the cops pulled us over when we were leaving and he got knocked.” My chest was visibly inhaling and exhaling the air from my lungs, as if I had just run a marathon or something.

The guy holding the gun on me instructed the other dude, “Go check the spot.”

As I sat on the floor scared as hell and at the mercy of the intruders, I could hear my house being ransacked.

The dude yelled from upstairs, “Ain't shit up in here!”

He was instructed to keep looking.

I tried my hardest to calm down, but I just couldn't. It felt like I was playing the role of Tommy's girlfriend, Keisha, in the movie
Belly
, when niggas ran up in her shit.

Five minutes more had passed by and then the Biggie look-alike came back into my living room. Once his fat ass caught his breath, he confirmed what he had said earlier.

“That's some bullshit! Get the fuck up!” the stocky dude ordered me.

I stood to my feet as I was instructed.

“We gon' get this shit up outta her! Fuck that!”

I stood up, and the room was silent.

“Yo, son, go turn on that stereo,” he ordered his man.

After fiddling with my sound system, the fat dude finally figured it out, and I heard the sound of music coming from the surround-sound speakers.

“Take all your clothes off, shorty,” the dude instructed me over the loud music.

“What?” I asked, looking like I was ready to shit in my pants.

“Take your muthafuckin' clothes off, bitch!”

I couldn't help but start sobbing because I knew what was coming next.

“You wanna take that pussy?” the short dude with the short-man complex asked his man.

“Hell fucking yeah,” he replied, rubbing his palms together in excited anticipation like a man ready to dig into Thanksgiving dinner.

“What do y'all want? I already told y'all that Calico was locked up. I ain't lying. You can check the Norfolk City Jail,” I pleaded, desperately hoping that I wouldn't get raped.

“Where the fuck is his stash at?” the dude asked me.

“I don't know. I don't fuck with Calico on that level,” I replied, sounding aggravated.

The cocky dude nodded his head to the big dude, and without hesitation he began unbuckling his belt and loosening his pants. Before I could blink, his pants and his boxers were down to his knees. His fat-ass belly was so huge, it was actually covering up his little-ass dick that he reached for and began stroking.

The sight of that fat, disgusting belly and his ugly-ass dick and balls was enough to make me throw up. I knew that if this nigga's dick actually penetrated my pussy, I would have died right there on the spot.

I urged myself.
Think, Jewel! Think, think, think,

“Okay, listen, I'm not sure, but I think Calico might have stashed something over here,” I said as I walked toward a closet that was located near my front door. My heart was pounding and ready to come out of my chest, but I had to make it to my ADT alarm system keypad.

I reached for the doorknob of the closet door, and at the same time I placed my hand on the alarm system keypad that was located right next to the molding of the door and pressed the police button.

“Back up from the closet!”

I was so nervous that when he yelled, I practically jumped, but I knew that I had to hold the button down for at least five seconds. “I can't promise that there's something in here, I mean—”

“Move back from the closet,” the dude said and pushed me away.

I was sure he hadn't realized that I had pressed the police button because he didn't say anything about that. He just opened the closet and began rummaging through it.

“I had just picked him up from the airport. If his bag ain't in there, it's gotta be around here somewhere,” I said, trying my hardest to stall for time.

“Man, that bitch lying! Let me break her ass off real quick and let's get the fuck up outta here,” Biggie Smalls Junior said. This dude still had his pants and boxers pulled down around his ankles. By now, his disgusting dick was rock-hard and three inches long, instead of the original two.

“Nah, just chill for a minute. That bitch said there was three kilos up in here, and we leaving with that shit.”

Right after he was done saying that, my home phone began ringing. I was almost sure that it was the alarm company calling to check shit out before they sent the police. I wanted to answer the phone, but I froze in my tracks and waited for them to say something.

The phone stopped ringing, and everyone looked at each other.

“Go bring me the phone,” the short guy said to his partner, who quickly retrieved the cordless handset. Then he instructed him to search through the caller ID. “That was probably that muthafucka Calico calling the crib.”

I prayed it wasn't Calico. I was hoping like hell that it was Touch because he would have definitely known what was up, and who to reach out to in order to come check on me.

“Ain't this a bitch! Yo, son, that was the fucking alarm company,” Biggie shouted.

Without warning, the short guy knocked me upside my head with the butt of his gun, spinning me around and sending me crashing to the floor, blood pouring out of the side of my head. I was literally seeing stars. I couldn't believe that I felt my own warm blood running down my chin.

The dude knelt down so that his mouth was right next to my earlobe. “You make sure you tell Calico that Sincere said that he's gonna stay all up in that ass!” After saying that, he kissed me on my earlobe and stuck his nasty-ass tongue in my mouth.

“Let's get the fuck up outta here, yo.”

With that, they left, not even bothering to shut my front door and leaving me lying on the floor in my own blood, woozy and feeling like I was about to pass out. I couldn't believe what I'd just gone through.

 

 

When I got the call from Jewel that some niggas had ran up in her crib and that she was hurt, I jumped on the next plane out of Atlanta and got my ass back to Virginia. I didn't know what was up, but I could bet that it had something to do with Calico. And if Jewel knew what was good for her, she would leave him the fuck alone.

I took a cab from the airport to her crib and jumped in my car. Then I headed straight to her girlfriend's crib and scooped her up and shot back to my crib with her.

I said to her while we drove toward my house, “Jewel, from all the years that I've known your ass, you ain't never lie to me. So why the fuck are you gonna start lying now? You telling me some niggas just ran up in your crib and pistol-whipped you, but they didn't take shit?”

“Yes, Touch. And why are you stressing me out? My head is killing me, and look at how I look. Look at my fucking face. Oh my God, I can't believe this shit!”

I paused because I wanted to make sure that I was acting rationally. But after thinking to myself for a moment, I knew in my heart that this shit had something to do with Calico. “So when the last time you seen Calico?”

“Touch, I don't know.”

“Did you fuck that nigga?”

“Touch, what are you talking about? Look, what you should be concerned with is dude with a New York accent named Sincere.
Sin
-fucking
cere
, not Calico!”

I said sternly, “Jewel, did you fuck that nigga, yes or no?” then stared her in her face as to say, “I dare you to lie.”

“No! Okay. All right? No, I didn't fuck Calico, gotdamn!” Jewel yelled and turned her head and looked out the window, a definite sign of deceit.

I didn't have a short fuse, in terms of a temper, but whenever I felt like someone was trying to insult my intelligence or trying to play me for a fool, that shit would always cause me to lose it.

“Jewel, you fucked that nigga, and I heard the whole shit. You fucked up and called my phone by mistake, so don't sit here and lie to me. I'm ready to kill niggas behind your ass, go to jail for your ass. And you know I would die for your ass if some muthafuckas violated you the way them niggas did. But one thing I ain't gonna do is be blind to some Calico bullshit and start fighting that nigga's battles.”

I looked over at Jewel as she sat slumped in the passenger seat. I could see the stress on her face. She had this look like she was ready to lash out with anger, but she kept her cool and didn't say a word.

“Now I'm gonna ask you again—Did this shit have anything to do with Calico?”

Jewel looked at me. She rolled her eyes and twisted her lips, and then she went on to tell me how Calico came to stay with her and that he didn't want anyone to know that he was in town, and that she had sworn to him that she wouldn't say anything to anybody. So, out of respect for him, she kept her mouth closed.

I slowly nodded my head, but I didn't say anything. Then there was this uneasy silence for a while.

“Touch, in case you ain't notice, I'm fucking grown. So, okay, yes, I fucked the nigga, but it was just one of those things that just kinda happened,” Jewel said, giving me that same old bullshit line I'd heard a thousand other dumb-ass bitches say, including my baby mother. “It wasn't planned or nothing like that.”

I smirked and then I reached for the radio and turned on the music, to break the tension that was clearly visible.

“Oh, so you're a whore now? Just randomly fucking niggas? The only chicks that I randomly fuck are tricks and whores.”

“You know what—”

“What?” I asked, cutting her off.

“Yes, well then, if that makes me a whore, then I'm a fucking whore. Shit!”

“I told you from the jump how that nigga rolled. He fucks bitches, set up shop in their crib, and when shit gets hot, he bounce. You're just another fucking statistic.”

The two of us finally reached my house, and I smoked a cigarette as we sat quiet in my car for a few moments not saying anything to each other. When I was done smoking, we exited the car and made it inside my crib.

For good reasons Jewel was scared to go back home and stay by herself, so I let her stay at my place, which I had no problem at all in doing.

“You know where everything is. Just make yourself at home. I gotta make some calls.”

I went into my kitchen and started calling all my soldiers and told them that we was getting ready to go to war with some cat with a New York accent who went by the name of Sincere.

When I was finished with one of my calls, Jewel came into the kitchen and told me that her and Calico had gone to Purple Rain, and she told me about the arrest and all that went down with that.

“So you just had a real fucked-up run?”

“Touch, I'm all fucked-up right now.”

All I could do was shake my head in pity. “Well, I'm just telling you this because, after I thought about everything, I realized that them dudes had to have seen us up in the strip club, and they must have asked around about who I was. That's the only thing I can think of as to how they knew there was a connection between me and Calico.”

“Jewel, I'm gonna make everything better. I'm on the shit. You just gotta listen to me and trust me. I know how Calico gets down and what he does with chicks and how he uses them. So who knows who he ran his mouth to and about what?”

“How does my face look?”

“Jewel, you're fine. That knot is just a ‘speed knot.' It's gonna go down. Besides, it's in your hairline. Once the swelling goes down, you'll be straight.”

Regardless of what I said, Jewel couldn't pull herself away from standing in front of the mirror and staring into it.

“By you just staring in the mirror, it ain't gonna change nothing. Why don't you just go upstairs, get one of my T-shirts, go take a shower, and then fix yourself a drink, and we'll just chill for the night. And if you need me to, I'll chill with you at your crib for a few days until we find this nigga Sincere.”

Jewel nodded her head, and then she took her shoes off and headed to my bedroom. Before long, she came back into the living room with my New York Giants Plaxico Burress jersey in her hands and asked if it was okay to wear that.

I gave her a look as if to say, “Why are you even asking me such a stupid question?”

Jewel immediately got my drift. Before she walked off, she said, “And just for the record, I wanna be clear that I ain't nobody's trick or nobody's ho.”

I knew damn well that she wasn't a whore. And, truth be told, I loved the fuck outta Jewel, like a dude loves his wife. In my mind she was like a wife to me, and it was time that I started making that shit known.

“I apologize for saying that. Jewel, you just . . .” I paused as I gathered my thoughts. “It's like you just different than most women, so when I react a certain way to shit or say certain shit, I'm speaking out of love, you feel me?”

“All I know is, you called me a skank whore, so save all that nice talk, mister,” Jewel said with a smile.

“So you accept my apology then?”

Jewel nodded her head and walked off.

I watched her sexy frame making its way back to my bedroom, and I couldn't resist. “I'm coming up there to take a shower with you. Don't make the water too hot.”

Jewel turned and looked at me. She sucked her teeth and smiled. “Anyway.”

Little did she know, I was dead-ass serious.