Now I needed a spot to push this stuff. A nation, a place to call home. Ashland and Madeira was the first spot that popped in my mind. A bunch of different crews had acquired and lost Ashland and Madeira over the last ten years. Street fortunes were made and lost there. My uncle Gee had it for the longest.
The highlight of my week back as a twelve-year-old in middle school was riding my little PW50 through there to kick it with him. A collage of forty-plus hustlers and countless junkies flooded his corner until you couldn’t tell who was selling what. They screamed the names of different products and prices like Wall Street bankers—with Gee running it all, squeezing a half-empty bottle of Hennessy and wads of cash poking out of his pockets.
“Uncle Gee, what’s good?” I’d say, parking the bike by the curb, dapping his workers.
“Nephew, sit and shut up, you need to hear this!” he’d reply before going deep into some story on how he was fucking with two of the three members from TLC or how he put a guy’s head in a car door before closing it—and always how the money would continue to flow through Ashland and Madeira.
After the rants came handouts. Sometimes he’d hit me with a small bundle of tens and twenties that I’d stuff in my socks, then he’d wrap a tight blunt and I’d chill on the corner for hours, blowing weed with Gee and the rest of the big dogs.
He made money, lots of it, but the place suffered from unorganized shifts, dealers fistfighting in the midst of sales, junkies being fucked in cars without tinted windows while us schoolkids watched, crack fiends with crack babies everywhere, long-ass dope lines, heavy overdosing, barefoot children, and terrified residents. It was the true definition of an open-air drug market.
Cops would pull in vans and arrest twenty to thirty people at a time. It was easy for them because all of the crime was transparent and out in the open. The dealers sat on stoops next to half-empty forty-ounces of Olde English with pockets full of cash and drugs—no stash, no system, no strategy.
And then there were the shootouts.
I almost got my head blown off on Ashland Avenue a number of times. Crown Vics and Chevy Corsicas would roll up on us; automatic weapons would tilt out of the windows and blast. Gee and his goons would bust back while me and the rest of kids would scatter like roaches under a flicked light, diving under cars and balling up in between stoops. This didn’t happen every day, but it did happen enough for us to develop a routine. I’m still leery of limo tints and cars that drive past me with their headlights off at night.
My uncle’s temper made the block a war zone. He was always slapping someone or shooting. Shooting to boost name, shooting for territory, or shooting just to shoot. A lot of rival crews wanted Gee’s head and we all knew that, but despite the obvious danger, I still came around, all the way up until Cherry was shot in 1993.
Cherry was one of Gee’s workers. He was a skinny slick talker with a big face, who was always going on about moving to Atlanta to start a family and a business. We’d laugh, like “Nigga, you a going nowhere!” and he wasn’t. We all knew that Cherry spent his money before he made it.
Cherry may have bluffed on moving away but he didn’t bluff on friendship. He lent cash to anyone, took shorts from fiends who was always a buck or two short, and protected his boys. Cherry covered Gee midway through one of those drive-by shootouts and caught one in the chest. He spun around and landed facefirst on the concrete. We ran up on him as the shooters sped off.
“Cherry, you good? Get up!” I yelled. His cousin Li’l Bo flipped him and propped his head. Cherry spoke, and blood came out. Li’l Bo yelled for help. It wasn’t the first time I saw a murder, but it was the first time I felt one. My heart dropped past my sneakers. A crowd had formed. I guessed the ambulance drivers were on break because minutes flew past without sirens.
I saw Cherry and me hooping the other day. I saw us sharing sunflower seeds; I spit the shells out, he chewed and swallowed them, and I told him that was weird. We had both stood on line for Air Jordan 3 Retro a week before. I saw my uncle putting him in the headlock and us laughing. We were friends. Ten years or more apart but we were the same. I looked at him lying on that ground and saw myself spitting that blood up, gurgling on it as it wrapped my chin and spilled down my neck.
“Get him out the street!” Gee ordered. We hovered around his body and picked him up; blood soaked our t-shirts and stained our jeans. We laid him on the sidewalk by Mrs. Gina’s house. She squeezed her grandbabies, biting her lip, covering their eyes. Sirens pulled up a few minutes too late. RIP Cherry.
I indirectly learned everything I needed to know about hustling from chilling around them. I knew my block would look nothing like the shit my uncle ran.