White Lines (17 page)

The words cut Leo like a knife, his worst fears realized. His son had seen him at his worst, strung out as he was. It was the lowest point in his life. Born walked toward his father, tromping across the wood floors in his Timberland construction boots, and closing the distance between them easily. Now, face-to-face, the two generations stared back at one another, their unspoken conversation so intense. Leo’s
eyes
held so many apologies, so many things he wished he had the words to explain to his baby boy. Born’s eyes held disappointment, the loss of all respect, and the anger of a man-child abandoned too soon by his father. Born extended his right hand to reveal the crack vial in his palm. He watched his father trying not to grab it, fighting the urge to seize the rock in his son’s hand. Leo didn’t want to buy crack from his son. But damn, he wanted that high!

Born watched his father’s inner battle, growing all the more disgusted as the seconds elapsed. Leo couldn’t look his son in the eye anymore, and instead stared at the drug in his outstretched hand. “Take it.” Born’s voice was flat and unfeeling. “Here.”

Leo, still hesitant, didn’t budge. “What’s the problem?” Born’s face held a cynical grin; the sad clown, smiling despite the pain he really felt inside. “You’re gonna give your money to
somebody
out here. It might as well be me.”

Leo felt lower than low. He pulled his last ten dollars from his pocket and handed it to his youngest child. Born took it and placed the crack into his father’s old, wrinkled hand, a hand that had once seemed so strong, so powerful, now looked bony and cold. He watched his father struggle, trying to find something to say. And Born let him squirm, let him cringe at the discomfort of the situation. Leo was frustrated, and not knowing what else to say, he asked, “Does your mother know you’re out here selling this shit?”

Born laughed. “What, you gonna tell on me, Pop? Go ‘head. Tell her. So, I can tell her that you’re out here smoking crack. Go ‘head!” He
laughed once more, right in his father’s face. Leo, realizing there was nothing he could say in his own defense, turned and began to walk away. His son’s laughter echoed in his ears.

“Just another fiend, man,” Born muttered to himself. “That nigga’s just another fiend.”

Born walked out of the crack house, leaving his father to get high with his fellow addicts. Born shook his head as he made his way back down the steps and past the little boy who still sat out front. This time, the kid looked directly at Born. He could see a vacant expression in the young boy’s eyes, and it broke his heart. Born felt like he was looking in the mirror at his own self as a child, wondering why crack had to infiltrate his family. Although Born had never had to sit around crack houses and watch his father’s addiction on that level, still he could identify with the child sitting before him. He knew how it felt to feel neglected by a parent who makes you feel like drugs are more important to them than you are. He felt guilty knowing that he was contributing to the habit of whoever this kid’s parent was. But Born quickly dismissed the feeling, telling himself that if he didn’t supply the fiends with drugs, some other hustler would gladly do it. Still, he felt the pain in the eyes of the little boy as he walked away, making his way up the block.

The look in the kid’s eyes haunted him so much that without a second thought Born walked to the bodega on the corner. He ordered a breakfast sandwich—sausage, egg, and cheese on a roll—and got a pint of Tropicana orange juice from the freezer. He looked behind the counter and directed the store owner to fill up a brown paper bag with all the candy kids adore—Jolly Ranchers, Now & Laters, taffy, gum, Skittles, Tootsie Rolls, jellyfish, Blow Pops, the works. Then Born walked back to the house where his father was surely getting high by now. He approached the steps and saw the young boy sitting there still. He walked up on him and asked, “Yo, shorty, what’s your name?”

The boy looked at Born suspiciously for a moment. He had been raised in the streets, and knew better than to converse with too many strangers. He looked Born over from head to toe. Then he answered, “Kevin.”

Born nodded his head. “Okay, Kevin. Here.” He handed him the bag with the breakfast sandwich, and watched as the child hungrily searched through its contents. A smile spread across his face, and he looked up at Born.

“Thanks,” he said.

Born smiled at the shorty. “You’re welcome.” He watched him devour the breakfast sandwich as if it was his first meal in days. It broke Born’s heart, and he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the brown paper bag filled with candy. The child’s
eyes
lit up at the sight of another bag of goodies, and Born laughed. Despite the little boy’s obvious upbringing in the streets, he couldn’t conceal his enthusiasm at the sight of all that candy. “Yo,” Born said. “Don’t eat all this at one time. It’s enough in there to last you a little minute.” He handed Kevin the bag of candy and watched as a huge smile spread across his face.

Kevin was thrilled. “Thanks, man!”

Born patted the kid on his nappy head, and smiled. He wanted to say something, but had no idea what to say. Finally, he found the words. “You keep your head up, shorty. It’ll get better. Trust me.” Born winked at little Kevin, whose mouth was filled to capacity with food, and he walked away.

Unbeknownst to Born, Leo had watched the whole thing from inside the crack house. He stared out the window watching his son’s exchange with the little boy, and his heart sank. He saw the pity in Born’s
eyes
as he looked down at the child. Born’s demeanor toward the child had said, “I understand.”

Leo looked at the crack pipe in his hand, and felt like shit. He got choked up for a minute, and then he grabbed the crack in his palm a little tighter. It was time to numb the pain. Time to escape reality for a little while. He got high, thinking the entire time about his son and how he had disappointed him. It was one of the saddest days of his life.

Yet Leo was so far gone that after that first time Born sold crack to his father, Leo came back to Born when the opportunity arose. Born preferred it that way, in all honesty. Crackheads are not well respected in the streets. Born hated to think of anyone talking down to his father, or humiliating
him. He was never his father’s primary source for the drug. But if Leo was in need and he ran into Born, he got his crack from him. The relationship between father and son had taken a twisted turn. They’d gone from being a larger-than-life father and his adoring son to an addict and his dealer. And Ingrid seemed blind to all of it.

Born and Martin had been hustling for A.J., taking the deal of thirty dollars off of every hundred they made. Together he and Martin held down a drug spot on the first floor in their building. When people saw them coming, they usually had different reactions to the two friends. When folks saw Born, they saw Miss Ingrid’s son, the respectful young man who was in the streets, but also was not the type you had to watch your back around out of fear of being stabbed in it. But Martin had a reputation for being a bully. Many people saw him as a loudmouthed menace, when in fact he was just a guy who liked to get drunk and start shit. That was just the way Martin was. But he was Born’s man, and they made a lot of money together. The two had been such good friends from the time they’d been small boys that an unspoken trust had developed between them. They were doing their thing, and bringing in lots of money. And they were doing it quietly.

It was no secret that drugs were being sold on the borough’s north shore. The police were focused on the projects. The Mariner’s Harbor projects were within walking distance from where Born and his crew lived. Arlington Terrace wasn’t the projects. It was a nice, working-class community. The grounds consisted of a cluster of several buildings and a small park, with five-bedroom town houses sprinkled around the perimeter. Hardly the place you’d expect to find a drug empire being run on such a grand scale. Born and his boys flew under the radar virtually undetected, and slept on by their counterparts in the Harbor projects. The money piled up, and things were looking up. But they began to want more money, more of a cut from what they were selling.

A.J., however, wouldn’t budge. He figured these youngsters should be glad that somebody was giving them a shot at all, and he let them know their percentage wasn’t negotiable.

“Y’all niggas are asking for too much,” A.J. said. Born and his crew had asked for a sixty-forty split. “I wish I could work witchu, you know what I’m saying? But, y’all lil niggas set the bar too high. Y’all want to get a promotion before you even had a chance to really prove yourselves.”

“How you figure we haven’t proved ourselves?” Born asked, his face twisted in a grimace. “We been bringing you more money as a crew than all your other workers combined. We might be young, but we ain’t stupid. We can do the math, A.J. The proof is in the numbers.”

A.J. shook his head. “The numbers are good, but that’s only because my product pretty much sells itself. I got y’all out here slanging top-of-the-line cocaine. The money is coming because the shit sells itself. You lil muthafuckas should be glad that I’m giving you a chance to see some real paper out here. You already got a good deal. Don’t get greedy.” A.J. waved his hand as if the meeting was concluded.

This didn’t sit well with the young men, who were hungry for a bigger piece of the pie. They didn’t bring up the subject with A.J. again, since he had made his position perfectly clear. But they didn’t go away quietly either. When they were together, they often griped about A.J. Martin became the most vocal about his displeasure with the cut they were getting, and it wasn’t long before Born agreed. They had had enough. If A.J. wasn’t willing to give them what they wanted, they were going to take it. Fuck it.

Born and Martin went to A.J. one day and told him they had been robbed. Their story was bullshit. And in reality they had just kept the drugs and sold them on their own, using the money they made to put themselves on. They got themselves established without A.J., and then they put their whole crew on. Born, Martin, Jamari, Chance, and Smitty were a team. They chartered their own territory, and did their own thing. They were notorious for doing whatever it took to get money. Right before everyone’s
eyes,
the crew from 55 Holland were the niggas running things in Arlington. They did whatever it took to get money, from shootings to robberies, from burglaries to crack sales. Martin emerged as the enforcer of the crew, having the heart to lay a nigga out without hesitation.
Martin’s reputation preceded him, and he was a legend in his own time.

At sixteen years old, Born had gotten himself an apartment of his own, separate from his mother. The apartment was downstairs on the second floor of the same building he’d grown up in. Ingrid didn’t complain, since her son was living right downstairs. It made her feel better knowing that he was so close by. And he no longer kept his guns, his drugs, or any other incriminating evidence at his mother’s place. He had his spot for that. The rent on the subleased apartment was cheap, especially with all the money he was bringing in. Born and the rest of the crew had stepped up their game. Now they no longer had to do many hand-to-hand sales. They employed workers for that, young dudes from around the way who were happy with the money they made from the block.

Things were going well. But Born could see the worry in his mother’s eyes. Ingrid looked at her son with a gaze full of wistfulness. She saw what could have been. Her son, who in school had been so good at math, and such an intelligent student, was now just a drug dealer, albeit a successful one. To her he was so much more than that. But the intelligent, witty, and lovable young man she saw when she looked at Marquis was very different from the hardened young criminal folks saw in Born. Her coworkers would ask her about it. “Was that your son that got arrested last night?” or “Did Marquis know the guy that got arrested for killing that boy last week?”

Ingrid sat and conveyed her embarrassment to her sister, Betty, on the phone one night. Betty had moved down south in order to get away from her own wayward children and all of their problems. Ingrid envied her sometimes, wishing that she had the courage to walk away as easily as Betty had. As Ingrid shared her dismay with her sister, she had no idea that Born had overheard.

“I’m going to work, and my coworkers are questioning me about my son. They got the nerve to ask me, ‘Was that Marquis that got arrested for that shooting? You know the one where the girl got wounded by that
stray bullet? I read in the paper that they arrested four or five boys. And when I read that they arrested Marquis Graham, I said, “Ain’t that In-grid’s son?”‘ Then they wanna act surprised when I tell them that it was Marquis. I wanted to cuss all them muthafuckas out! But I didn’t. The last thing I need to do is to give them a reason to fire me.”

Betty sucked her teeth. “So, what did you tell them?” she asked.

Ingrid lit a cigarette, and exhaled the smoke. “I answered their questions calmly, even though I wanted to put them nosy bitches in their places. I said that he was young and unruly, and very hardheaded. But I know he ain’t shoot that girl. I left it at that. Nobody questioned me any further. And I went on about my day as if everything was gonna be fine.” Ingrid took another drag. “But I ain’t gonna lie to you, Betty. I’m scared.”

“Scared about what?” Betty asked. “They ain’t gon’ fire you.”

“I’m not worried about them firing me. I don’t
want
to get fired, but that ain’t what I’m worried about. I’ve always worked, always had a good reputation. But now Marquis is getting in more trouble, and Leo is …” Ingrid couldn’t find the right word to use to describe her husband’s current state. “I’m scared that I’m about to lose one of them.”

Betty understood what her sister was feeling. “Ingrid, you need a break. That’s what I think. You got too much going on right now. Marquis is giving you hell, and so is Leo. And still you run around working and letting everybody pile their problems on your shoulders.”

“Ain’t nobody piling their problems on my shoulders, Betty.”