The Syndicate (3 page)

We all turned to him. His voice was low and even. The designer gold-trimmed glasses he had on couldn't hide the pain in his eyes. They were red and puffy as he glanced at each of us, eyes stopping on Javon.

“Can't do what?” Naveen asked. “Whatever it is, add it to the list of shit you seem to can't do around here. You can't cook. You can't clean. Mama always did it for you. You can't iron your own fucking clothes. Can't do shit, Jojo. Just like you couldn't pick Mama up like you were supposed to,” he spat.

My eyes widened. I was so shocked and dismayed by Naveen's words that when Cory jumped up and shoved him backward, it didn't register.

“Navy, chill out,” he barked at Naveen.

Naveen and Jojo were the youngest, Naveen's eighteen to Jojo's seventeen, so they often fought like any true blood brothers would. They tended to be back on good terms by the end of the night, but this time, there was something in Naveen's eyes that told me this wasn't any ordinary fight.

“Naw, don't act as if we all haven't felt the same thing. If he had picked Mom up like he was supposed to, she'd still be here,” Naveen yelled. “He's a spoiled little piece of shit who needed Mama to wipe his own ass, but when she needed him most he couldn't be there for her. She wouldn't have even had to be at that bus stop if he had done what he was supposed to!”

Jojo's face did something freaky. He frowned then looked like all the air had been sucked out of his lungs. His lips moved like fish as if he was trying to explain or defend himself but didn't have the words. The pain and hurt from Naveen's words were written all over his face and in his body language. Then his expression changed. The hurt behind his brother's words turned to malice. He leapt from the chair so fast it was like a blur. Jojo shot right past Cory and speared Naveen over the chair that was behind him.

It was like something off of
WWE.
I think what shocked us most was that normally Jojo was cool, calm, and collected. He rarely got in fights or spats outside of sibling rivalry. So for him to go at Naveen shocked all of us.

“Fuck you,” Jojo howled and he swung at Naveen. “You always talking shit, coming at me like you stupid.”

As he squealed and yelled, Cory and Lamont pulled their little brothers apart. Jojo was still fighting mad as tears rolled down his pecan brown face. Naveen tried to shove past Cory, but couldn't. Lamont had Jojo wrapped in his arms. Normally, Naveen didn't show his temper, but judging by the veins popping out of his forehead, he was visibly angry.

When he saw he couldn't get past Cory, he picked up a bowl of gravy sitting on one of the tables and chucked it at Jojo. The bowl hit him in the head. Gravy and blood spilled down his face. Jojo grunted and his glasses fell to the floor.

Melissa and Inez rushed over to him while cussing at Naveen. “Navy, why you do that?” Inez asked with concern in her voice.

“You're a dickhead, Navy,” Melissa chided.

“Are you out of your damned mind?” I screamed at Naveen.

Before I could fix my mouth to verbally assault Naveen further, Javon was across the room. I tried to grab the back of his shirt, but he was too quick. His nostrils were flared. Eyes were cold and flinty. When Javon was angry, everyone gave him wide berth so it was no surprise when Cory moved away from Naveen just as Javon reached him.

“Javon, no,” I pleaded, knowing he was seconds away from putting Naveen on his ass.

He grabbed Naveen by the collar of his shirt and slammed him down into the chair behind him. The big, cushioned chair rocked and wobbled from the force of the slam and Naveen's weight. He almost cowered under Javon's anger. I was happy that before Javon could do any real damage, he caught himself.

“You sit your ass in this fucking chair and you stay there,” Javon said through gritted teeth. “I don't need this shit from you today, understand?” he asked, a finger pointed sternly in Naveen's face.

“All he had to do was pick her up,” Naveen said defiantly, making Javon try to grab at him again.

Cory jumped in front of his brother, and spoke something in Tagalog while trying to stop Javon from laying hands on Naveen. Naveen threw his hands up to try to stop whatever Javon was about to do, but Cory had blocked his brother.

I could tell that Javon was trying to keep his anger in check. He was trying to level out his temper so he could be in control and responsible for what he was about to do. But Naveen's actions had pushed him to the edge and Javon was struggling not to fall over. Naveen's chest rose up and down slowly as he bit into his bottom lip, water rapidly leaking from his eyes. Fresh tears rolled down my face as I knew all of this stemmed from the fact that Mama was gone. My sisters and I were used to this. Growing up in a houseful of boys, we'd seen our share of dick measuring contests, but this was different.

“All he had to do was pick her up, Von,” Naveen pleaded his case while looking up at Javon. Still crying he said, “That was it. That's all she ever asked him to do and he couldn't do it.”

I ran a hand over my eyes to stop the tears. I glanced around the room and it was easy to see that Naveen was right. Most if not all of us had that same thought process at one time or another since Mama's death. I was guilty of it myself. My first thoughts asked why she was at a bus stop when it was Jojo's job to pick her up. She'd taken money from her savings to buy him the car he wanted on his sixteenth birthday and all she'd asked was that he pick her up from the juvenile center three days a week. Jojo had been half-assing the job since he'd gotten his whip. But Mama never made a big fuss about it. Jojo was spoiled. Naveen was right about that, too.

Jojo must have sensed it as well. As gravy and blood slid down his face, he studied all of us. When his eyes landed on me, I dropped my eyes out of guilt. When I looked back at him, he had a pleading look in his eyes as he looked at Javon and Cory. He found no reprieve there either.

“I . . . I was coming. But she said . . . She sent me . . . She texted and . . .” he stammered; but he couldn't finish whatever it was he was about to say.

The glass tumbler that I had placed on the mantel of the fireplace fell to the floor with a hard crash, startling all of us. Mama's picture seemed to be glaring down at us. That calmed down all the anger in the room.

Jojo pulled away from Lamont and ran up the stairs. Javon ordered Naveen to go outside and cool off before he stormed out of the room himself. Cory and Lamont soon left too, leaving me, Melissa, and Inez alone.

The woman I felt was my true mother was gone. The only woman who stepped up to the plate in my and my baby brother's lives was gone. Mama Claudette was gone from me.
Fuck!
The image of her sweet, warm nut brown face gazing down at all of us in regard as if telling us to pay her attention back in the house flashed in my mind. I could hear her now:
“Quit with all that discord and sassing. Y'all are family and this right here is not acceptable at all. It makes no type of sense to waste that type of energy on everyone here, because they love you and would not do harm on ya soul. Not purposely and mean it.”

Naveen's words rang true in my mind. I hated that it was there, hated that I agreed. As the eldest of this family, shit, I was supposed to be the logical and clear-thinking one; but I couldn't see past the pain in my heart. Love him like my own blood I did, but Jojo had made a deadly mistake. Part of me wanted to know what the fuck had kept him from keeping his promise to her and picking her up, but another part of me just didn't give a damn in the moment. Kid or not, his immaturity in this one thing had assisted in Mama Claudette's death.

A numbness spread through me. My rising hurt was mixing into a rage that I might not be able to contain. I was known to be a silent killer with my temper. Stone-faced, locked jaw, usually it took nothing for someone to understand not to mess with me, or know that if they did not heed my one-worded warning life would become very difficult from that day on. The way I emoted my feelings started long ago.

From where I stood outside of the house, I could see the parlor where we all once stood. People had entered and exited our childhood home as the wake finally ended. I could smell food resting in warmers from the kitchen. Greens with neck bones and ham hocks, sweet potato casserole, sweet cornbread cake, fried turkey, mashed garlic potatoes, seasoned green beans with potatoes, fried fish of every type: our home had turned into a prime soul food restaurant. All in the memory of our foster mother Claudette.

Looking toward Shanelle through the window I watched her jet forward to frantically pick up the tumbler. Glistening tears spilled over her apple cheeks, as her amber brown skin had reddened. I saw myself going to her in two strides had I been back in the parlor. Saw my other self kneeling down to help her, then pull her into my arms as she held me and cried. But, none of that was going down. I stood with my hands in the pockets of my black slacks staring at my foster mother's garden. It seemed, even as I was a grown man, Shanelle's presence could keep my anger in check, and only two other people could be that type of anchor for me. One was my blood brother and the other was dead.

My first memory of Mama Claudette was simple: she was my aunt. Not by blood though. How my mother, Toya, explained it was that back where she grew up, every kid in the hood called her Auntie, so that's how. Every day it seemed my mom would drop Cory and me on her doorstep, even if my aunt wasn't home. Toya would simply unlock the door, push us inside, and tell us not to get in trouble. See, the woman who pushed my brother and me from her twat was a manipulative leech and gold-digger.

Whenever there was some old head who had money who lost a wife, she'd find her way near him in our neighborhood and live there until she got kicked out because a family member ended up learning that she was there. All of this while Cory and I ran the streets just to get out of the house from her tricking off old men. Nine times out of ten our mother kicked them out and it was on to the next one though. People in our hood always gossiped about how money ended up “missing” whenever Toya got involved.

Twice Toya had been married. Her first husband, my father, was a terminally ill seventy-year-old man who was a war vet, surviving 'Nam. Dude got mad checks, one for being a war vet, and another for serving in 'Nam and having been sprayed with Agent Orange. When he died, my mom moved on, and a fat amount of money mysteriously disappeared with her. Everyone in the neighborhood spoke about that shit until she linked up with Cory's father six months later.

Cory's father was a retired sixty-year-old Filipino who lived in our hood. He used to run several liquor and grocery shops in our area. Toya stayed with him the longest. I remember how he always was handing her ducats. She never took anything from him lower than $2,000.

Toya and him would break up then get back together. He'd always give her money. Cory and I learned Tagalog and Spanish from him and Toya's off-and-on boyfriend in between Cory's pops. Eventually Toya's running in and out of our lives and other niggas' lives settled down when she went back to Cory's father. Years later, after they divorced because she didn't want to move to the Philippines, she collected money for Cory until his father died when he was ten.

After that, she died six months later from being shot by the kid of one of the men she was trying to take money from, leaving me and Cory homeless and in the system. We were in Ohio then. I remember running away with Cory after I pulled a gun on an old, racist couple we were fostered with. Bastards would religiously take a broom and beat me and Cory with it until it left welts on us because we were the beasts from the wild.

We tried to suck it up, because we needed shelter. But when Mr. Wilks broke a broom on Cory's back then turned and whacked me with it, leaving me with a bloody face and a cut down my chest, I knew we had to run to survive. For months we took a little coin here and there, until we had enough for bus fare. We took the Greyhound to Atlanta and a taxi, ending up at Auntie Claudette's house. Once there we had no idea what we were going to do next. She wasn't home. We had no key, we had nothing, so we hid on the side of her house waiting.

Claudette gave us a once
-
over. She slowly dropped a lid on the top of the Mason jar and sealed it tight while holding the handkerchief. “Was that you, little boy?” she asked motioning toward Cory.

“Nah
-
on. No, ma'am. I wouldn't say nothing like dat either,” Cory said. “I don't want a whooping, so I wouldn't say nothing like that. I know better.”

But it was Uncle Snap who stopped her. He told her something like, “Sista, I got this.” Then he took his blade, cut the man's clothes and ear, and then dragged him out never to be seen until a week later when his body was found by some local police, bloated and laid out on the train tracks. The old goon's body was laid out in the baking sun disemboweled by being run over by a train. When the police came in that old neighborhood
—
and by “come” it meant they took bullhorns and announced themselves because that old Augusta community, Creek Town, used to scare even the hardest racists and Klan men from coming into that area
—
everyone acted like they knew nothing.

That memory was always with me. As I thought about it now, I gathered she learned everything from the ticket stubs in our backpacks. The gun I had disappeared that day as well.

This house held a lot of good memories. My fingers ranover the banister that carried the carved names of every kid who came through Claudette's house. Back then, that was when we stopped calling her Auntie and began calling her Mama. For Cory and me, from that moment on, Toya was just a female who pushed us from her vagina. When she died, we were sad, but that lasted only a day. We were raised by the streets, and eventually educated by Mama Claudette.

My world wasn't making sense right now. I had to get it together.

“Remember when she chased us around the house for stealing her purse?” I heard at my side.

A light chuckle came from me matching my baby brother's and I gave a nod reliving it, seeing the image of two little boys running from an older lady, quick as hell, across the front lawn.

“Yeah, and we weren't even trying to steal it,” I said with a weak smile.

“Nope, we weren't. We were putting in some money we made in the streets, selling old books and things we found in the trash,” Cory explained.

My baby brother stood at my side. His long locs were pulled back and he leaned a fisted hand against the beam that attached to the banister. The smile at the memories of us growing up here slowly disappeared and was replaced with sadness and pain.

“What are we going to do with this place? What are we going to do now?” he asked in concern and grief. “My heart hurts.”

Rubbing the front of my shirt, I felt that same sharp pain. “Mine too.”

I wasn't sure what we all were going to do. For now, I was reacting and in my pain, but with the memory of that glass falling underneath Mama's picture, I realized that we as the remaining family had to heal.

“Let's go back inside and get us kids back in check,” I gently said, reaching out to clap a hand on my brother's shoulder and squeeze.

“Uncle Snap is—”

Interrupting I gave a nod. “I know. I know.”

Seeing the devastation on our uncle's face was another reminder about our mother. Since the repast began, he had been in the kitchen sitting at the little table there, smoking and cradling a bottle of White Henny, pouring it in a blue Mason glass. The man lost a piece of himself and it was apparent from the slump in his back and how his head hung low.