MOST FOLKS IN THE HOOD IN MIAMI CARRIED FIRE. I just hadn’t been in a situation yet to need a pistol myself. Even Pearl kept a .22. I’ll never forget the day I came home and she had it pointed at some old dude who was loitering around our apartment trying to flirt with my sister. Teenage girls in the suburbs have slumber parties and talk about their first crush. Jewish families throw bat mitzvahs to usher in their daughters’ approaching womanhood. Wealthy Hispanic girls have quinceañera. In the Beans, burgeoning curves meant you became prey for old, perverted bastards that raped chicks under the bleachers adjacent to the basketball court. Pearl wasn’t having it.
“I swear, if you come at my girls again, you won’t have a johnson to wave at them!” she yelled. “I’ll shoot it off!”
That pervert ran dizzy through the courtyard. Having been taken advantage of by men her entire life, Pearl refused to see her daughters fall victim to the same abuse. I asked her where she got the fire from.
“None of your damn business! You think you’re grown now? Don’t ever let me see you with a gun in my house.”
But news traveled fast in the Beans. Folks knew if you needed a pistol, Jo Jo over in the Blueberries was the person to go see. His father was locked up in federal prison for gun smuggling. Jo Jo was carrying on the family business. The dude’s apartment was stocked like the National Guard armory. Jo Jo wasn’t older than fifteen, but he lived alone with his two younger sisters. He gave his neighbor some money to pretend to be his mom when the child services people came snooping around. Like I said earlier, everyone had a side hustle. When I knocked on his door later that week, he wasn’t particularly inviting.
“What they do?” asked Jo Jo.
I peeked into the peephole. “Your cousin Ray told me to come see you about that fire.”
“Bruh, I don’t have no cousin named Ray, and the only fire I know is the one burning in the Everglades. So if you ain’t with the Miami-Dade fire department come to inspect my apartment, you need to keep it moving!”
I pulled out a $100 bill and slid it under the door.
The door cracked. Jo Jo looked me up and down and shook his head. “Damn, you ain’t nothing but a little nigga.”
I stepped in. His sisters were playing with a dollhouse on the floor. Jo Jo waved me into his bedroom closet. The kid’s closet looked like Iwo Jima. He had assault rifles, semiautomatics, silencers, even a grenade.
“Damn, bruh, how you got all—”
“Hold up, my nigga,” replied Jo Jo. “First and foremost, you don’t ask no questions in relations to another nigga’s trade. You should know that. I know your old boy’s an OG. He’s locked up with my pops in the Feds.”
I gazed at the floor. I would inevitably have to have that conversation, but right now I wanted a hand cannon. I wanted a pistol that could fire a bullet the size of Texas into Tank’s chest.
Jo Jo brought out a chrome .38 with a black handle. It glittered all over when the closet light shone on it. It now belonged to me. Jo Jo tucked the $100 in a shoebox. “If your young ass gets arrested, they don’t know where you got the fire from,” he said sternly.
I nodded, then hit the courtyard. It was on. I rounded up my crew, who were on the basketball court shooting hoops. I showed off the chrome beauty tucked in my shorts. I was becoming a man. I couldn’t wait to find Tank.
I got your little fuck nigga.
My blood boiled over. The adrenaline rush of the streets is addictive. You can’t get enough of the drama while you’re spiraling down a dead end.
At that moment all I could think about was firing a full clip into Tank so folks would know not to mess with me. If you began it, I would sure as hell finish it. My crew looked at me as if they knew something I didn’t. O’Sean finally blurted it out.
“Tank got shot.”
“Yeah, somebody capped his ass,” said Darryl.
This wasn’t a game after all. In the Beans, lives evaporated like mud puddles on a hot summer’s day. I felt a twinge of sorrow for Tank. Just minutes ago I was sure I wanted to be the one to end his life. That’s the messed-up thing about being raised in a jungle. You start acting like an animal. Did I really want Tank’s life to end? Of course not. A ten-year-old doesn’t know the true consequences of death.
Tank was gone.
There could be no saying I’m sorry to his parents or maybe the girl and child he left behind. In the hood things happen in a blur. You race through life in a fog of anger and resentment. Most murders aren’t thought out or planned. Sometimes someone just gets scared or angry and a body is left cold and crumpled on the concrete. The coroner’s office marks your sorry ass off as John Doe.
I’m sure Tank had it coming. He had put many dudes to sleep in his mere eighteen years on the planet. But no one wins when someone gets killed. One brother is trapped below six feet of dirt and worms, and the other’s in a six-by-nine-foot cell.
They say Tank ran up on some dudes who had just moved to the Beans from Scott Carver projects. A lot of violence occurs when people are displaced from one project to another. The new crew is usually trying to move in on drug turf, forcing the resident crew to defend it. Tank lost that fight.
“Shit, he had it coming,” I boasted, concealing my inner anguish over his death. “He’s lucky they got to him first.”
My crew looked at one another. They understood that Maurice was going to be a force to be reckoned with. We weren’t taking any shit from anyone. When I walked through the hood, something was different. The means by which you earn stripes in the hood is so warped it’s downright insane.
I got props for not begging for my life when Tank put his pistol to my head. It made Maurice a “stone-cold motherfucker.” I had balls . . . big ones. My clientele increased. It was known throughout the Beans, Blueberries, and Green Machine that my crew had the weed to get you to that special place. You know, the place where you forgot your rent is overdue and they’re about to turn off the lights. Hell, I was the go-to guy to get high. News surely does travel fast in the hood.