Ay Yo, Biggie my favorite rapper but he say some gay-ass shit like, ‘Girl, you look so good huh, I’ll suck on ya daddy dick’ and I’m like, ‘Yo! What type of homo shit is that?’” yelled Nick from downstairs.
“Word, that line is mad suspect,” I replied, digging in my ashtray, looking for a blunt butt to spark.
“I’m a call this weed and roll some pussy. I mean… You know what I mean, nigga. You want some weed and some pussy, right?” Nick said, flopping on the couch ass first.
“Yo, Dee, Biggie a handsome fat nigga like me. That’s why I fuck with him. He made fat niggas sexy, though, you feel me?”
I laughed as I went back upstairs and climbed back into my bed, wondering what it would be like not to feel. Emotions are unneeded baggage that won’t allow me to be anything but a broken person who weeps in isolation. If I was as smart as I thought I was, I’d be able to teach myself not to feel. My sheets smelled like bud and underarms. Bip’s RIP balloons were past deflated and sagging over my dresser.
“I’ma bring the blunt up to you, bro!” hollered Nick.
Nick tried his best to help me cope with losing Bip. His idea of coping meant good weed, lots of Belvedere, and being an ear even though I didn’t say much. He tried to make me laugh every day and sometimes it even worked. More importantly, Nick helped me move all of the books, sneakers, and everything else that belonged to Bip out of the house. Dump the clothes, dump the memories, dump the pain, or so I thought. Some of those memories remained undumpable: Bip’s bookstands, Bip’s push-up bars, the matching recliners we sunk into when watching playoff games, his spare car keys on my dresser.
His smell—Polo Blue—lurked around corners, his toothbrush, hairbrush, and flat razors. “Fuck is my razors at, D!” he’d yell on date nights. Bip’s half-eaten crab cake was still in the fridge, his boxes of Raisin Bran, Mistic Pink Lemonade iced tea—his official drink—his posters, his toiletries, and his pictures.
I had to get off of Curley Street.
Milton, the same guy who rented us the place on Curley, had a corner house in back of a alley for me on North Castle Street—about two miles north. The boarded-up homes that filled the neighborhood made it look like a crackhead resort.
He wanted six hundred dollars a month, which was cool. I thought I could look for a job while I lived off of the eight thousand and some odd dollars that I had saved up from Bip’s allowances. College could wait.
Nick needed a place too, so I told him that he could move in for three hundred dollars a month and we could split the utilities along with the cable bill straight down the middle. He was cool with that, so I signed the lease and paid the first three months in cash.
Nick sold a little weed too, when he could get it. It wasn’t the best or the worst—mid-grade with small traces of orange hair and every once in a while you found a seed. He was no Scarface but he raked in enough dough to cover his share of the bills, and if he couldn’t, we could always get money from Hurk.
Hurk and I met in the towers. His mom sucked dick for crack until she became too hideous to touch. By the time I was thirteen, her gums were bare, her skin peeled like dried glue, chap lived on her lips and she always smelled like trash-juice. Her last days were spent panhandling on Fayette Street and getting a puff or two off of old cigarette butts she found smashed in the pavement. Eventually AIDS took her out of her misery.
Hurk’s my age. When we were kids, his family was about a billion dollars below the poverty line. All of his jeans had shit stains because he didn’t have underwear or running water, and he had so many holes in his shoes that his feet were bruised. Shortly after we met, I started giving him clothes that I didn’t want and he stayed with us most nights. We became brothers.
At thirteen, Hurk started hustling for Bip and never looked back. He loved his job. Hurk was organized, and he worked harder than anyone else on the corner. Like a little Bip, Hurk beat the sun to work every morning—four a.m. in the blistering cold, with bright eyes and fists full of loose vials.
He never messed up the count and seized every advancement opportunity. His workload tripled after Bip passed, but he called every day and came by when Nick and I moved into the new place.
“Dee, how you holdin’ up, shorty?” said Hurk.
“I don’t even know. Man, I been in the bed for weeks,” I replied.
“Naw, nigga, get out. Get a cut, nigga, go do some shit! Least you still alive!”
“You right,” I said as I sat on the edge of my bed.
“What the fuck, Yo, you cry every day?” Hurk asked.
“Naw, well no, shit, I dunno.”
“Yo, anyway I’m gonna murder dat nigga that popped Bip. Ricky Black bitch ass. You go live, nigga, get some new clothes, pussy or sumthin’.”
I picked my head for the first time in days. “I didn’t even know my bro had static with him.”
The drama that comes with murder made Hurk excited. He leaped from his seat.
“I don’t know why he killed Bip. But they saying it’s him, he was always a hata. But whatever, Yo, I’ma get dat nigga!”
I told him he was crazy, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t happy or sad, just indifferent and used to murder. I wouldn’t commit that murder—I’m not a killer. I am capable of hate. I hate Ricky or whoever did this, and I am a direct product of this culture of retaliation. A culture that did not allow me to sleep, eat, or rest until I know that Bip’s killer is dead. It didn’t even matter if Hurk or I killed Ricky or not because someone would eventually. Bip received love from almost every thug in the city, so someone would avenge his death.
“I gotta go, I got dope to sell, brova. I love you!” said Hurk, fixing his jeans, preparing to exit.
“Be careful,” I said.
“Nigga, I keep the ratchet on me,” he replied while lifting his sweatshirt to show me the gun planted on his waist. He also said that he had an HK in his backpack with a bunch of rounds that clicked against each other when he moved.
“Better to get caught with a hammer than without it, ya dig?” I said while showing him to the door.
“You should think about school, D. Bip would like that. Plus I won’t be around too much, Yo, I’m on the run for some bullshit. They sayin’ I shot somebody. Da cops kicked my girl’s crib in at four a.m. and everything!”
“Damn, you did it?”
“Who knows, but fuck the police, I’ll holler!” said Hurk, flapping on his hood and walking out.