Alibi II (13 page)

“We’re gonna see just what you’re made of, bitch!” His assailant laughed, bending down and picking Nard up.

The air had been knocked out of him, and all he could do was hold his stomach, gasping as he felt his pants being ripped below his knees. Before he could protest, he felt a long, hard dick penetrating him. He tried to free himself, but was sucker punched in the face.

“Take it, nigga,” said a big, tall guy everyone called Smitty. Smitty, Mel, and Hawk, all under the orders of Otis, tore into Nard as he tried to fight them off. Overpowered, he continued to struggle. Not once did he give in, fighting as best he could as everyone on the block made it their business to get busy and as far away from what was transpiring as possible. No one would see or hear anything. And if asked, they would all have the same response. “I don’t know nothing.”

The correctional officer assigned to the block was finishing up a crossword puzzle before making his rounds. Someone shouted out, “Five O!” to alert the others on the block, but more important, Smitty and Hawk.

Smitty dropped the hold he had on Nard’s hips, letting his ass go at the same time. He pulled his dick out of Nard and watched Nard fall to the floor in excruciating pain while blood and semen dripped down his legs.

“I’ll be back to finish your bitch ass off, ya heard,” he said, intending to kill Nard as instructed, but not having enough time because Five O was en route.

“Don’t you have something you should be doing?” asked C. O. Parks.

“You right, I do,” said Wilson Gray, watching as Smitty, Mel, and Hawk walked back down the block to their own cells, acting as if nothing had happened, and if it did, they didn’t know anything about it.

“Break it up and get back to where you belong.”

Otis lay down on his bottom bunk and picked up a magazine, acting as if nothing was going on.

When C. O. Parks walked down the hall and looked into the cell, he saw Nard, who was still on the floor, unable to get up, unable to move.

“What the fuck, Otis? What the fuck did you do to him?”

“Man, I ain’t did nothing to him. I was out there with you. I just walked back in here and he was laid out on the floor. I don’t know what you talking about.”

Nard would spend the next week healing in the prison’s infirmary. But, as soon as he was sent back to D block, cell 14, it seemed as if Otis and his crew had been doing nothing more than sitting around waiting for his return. Walking down the block, Nard could feel all eyes on him like praying mantises waiting to engulf their prey. The entire block was now ready to take a shot at Nard, and he knew it. Even bitch-ass niggas thought they could try him. It was only a matter of time before they did. And time was something he just didn’t have. Little did he know that all that had transpired was because of Jeremy Tyler, a thief, who thought he could rob Nard, and had snuck through a window and gotten his brains blown out. All this was over his dumb ass and a phone call that his dumb-ass brother had made, attempting revenge. Little did Nard know, but he would soon find out.

Merlin Watkins was two cells down. He had silently listened to the attack on Nard from his cell. Merlin understood how Nard was feeling, he, too, had been raped by Otis and his crew. So, he understood how Nard had to be feeling—ashamed, scared, and lonely. Merlin waited and waited, watching the movements of the block. Everybody would be called to go outside, and even though it was freezing cold, the chance for fresh air and walking outside the concrete jungle they lived in had a way of making a nigga feel free, even if there were twelve foot fences and barbed wire surrounding them. When Merlin found a safe zone to move, he walked into Nard’s cell, slid one of his handmade wooden knives under Nards pillow, smiled at him, then walked back out the cell, not saying a word.

That’s how his sentence started, fucked up, but it wouldn’t be how his sentence ended.

North Philadelphia
Beverly’s House

Uncle Ray Ray sat quietly, listening to Beverly as she spoke to Mr. DeSimone about Nard and what had happened to him. He had a hundred and one questions to bombard his niece with once she hung up the phone. He looked at Beverly, remembering how it seemed like yesterday that she was lying lifeless in the hospital. Not a day would pass that he didn’t thank God for sparing their lives that night. The city murder rate was sky-high, shootouts and drive-bys happened in the inner city every day. Ray didn’t understand what was happening to his neighborhood. It just wasn’t how he had come up. He was forty-eight years old, and he came up in the sixties and the seventies. There were drugs, always an element of crime, and even gangs, but the fight was for the power, the fight was against the man. And there was a level of solidarity that seemed to be missing among the young men he encountered now.

“I can’t believe him, we did everything to get him off, and he beat that case! You mean to tell me he done went to jail and is facing another twenty-five years to life in prison for murder?”

Beverly wanted to throw the phone, but she didn’t, she stood still, barely maintaining her composure as tears began to melt down the side of her face.

“Well, what did the lawyer say?”

“He said Nard has been charged with murder. He killed a man, knocked some other guy’s eyeball out and squished it in his hand, attacked another guy, stabbing him with a wooden shank and whatever else you can think of,” said Beverly, spinning around and falling into the chair next to the phone.

“Did they have the hearing, yet?”

“He said he’s going inside now.” Beverly shook her head, then put her head in her hands, resting her elbows on her knees. “What’s wrong with him?” She looked up at her uncle with tears in her eyes. “He had eighteen months, with his served time, a year if that, and would have been eligible for parole. Why couldn’t he just do the years and come home?” Beverly asked, not understanding why her son was spending his life behind bars like some caged animal. She could see him doing the year and then making parole. She had swallowed the pain two years ago when he was first arrested. But now DeSimone was saying he could possibly be sentenced to another fifteen to twenty-five years for a prison murder.

“He told me that he didn’t have no choice, Beverly. That could only mean one thing…and if the boy’s in there fighting for his life, then he’s doing what he got to do to survive. The lawyer is on it, DeSimone will do the best that can be done. All this is out of our hands, so ain’t no need in crying over spilled milk.”

As Uncle Ray Ray was speaking on behalf of Nard, he heard someone at the door. It was Crystal, and to say the least, time had changed her, so much so that Beverly didn’t know if she was coming or going. The only thing that was still stable was Tyrone. For the first time, in all the years they had been together, she could honestly say that their relationship was solid, like a rock. Tyrone was still right there, right by her side. He had moved in, fully committed to her and their relationship. He got a job down at a steel factory in South Philly and was a hard-working man, doing the right thing by her.

Her cousin Chris, oh, jeez, this fool was caught trying to break into their house. And he had been snatching old ladies’ purses, taking their ATM cards and trying to figure out their bank card codes to withdraw their money from the ATM. You would think he would have known he was on camera standing at the ATM machine, but he didn’t. So he had many charges of theft and burglary, and Uncle Ray Ray kept bailing him out of prison. He was so thin and frail, he just looked bad. Beverly felt sorry for Uncle Ray Ray. He had tears in his eyes every time he saw his son.

“What in the world is wrong with this boy? I’ve done the best I can. There is nothing I can do with him,” explained Uncle Ray Ray to Sergeant Wright as they watched the police manhandle a fighting, yelling, kicking, and screaming Chris into the back of a police car after Mr. Clarence spotted a man in the alleyway in the back of their house. Not knowing it was Chris, Mr. Clarence had called the police, looking out for Ray and Beverly. When the police arrived they caught Chris climbing through a window that he had broken in the back of the house that led into the basement. It was really sad, but worse than Chris was Crystal. She had turned out to be the neighborhood crack whore and Uncle Ray Ray, Beverly, Donna, Maeleen, and Rev all had to witness her life crumble in front of them. Crystal really let herself go and Beverly couldn’t help her.

“Here she go, right here, I told you she’d show up…”

“Crystal?” Beverly asked, cutting her uncle right off.

“Mmm-hmm, the one and only,” he answered peering out at her, not sure if he should open the door.

“Where’s them papers I need her to sign?” asked Beverly, tired of Crystal and her games. She had gotten strung out on crack cocaine real bad. All she did was get high. They said she sold her body out at Cobbs Creek Park in Southwest Philly where she had moved with her momma. She was thin and raggedy-looking, her hair was never done, just pulled back, and her teeth were turning a dark yellow-gray color. Her clothes stayed dirty, and whenever she wanted something she showed up at Beverly’s door, where she had abandoned Dayanna shortly after she started getting high with her momma and her momma’s boyfriend. Beverly heard through the grapevine that it was the mother’s boyfriend who got the mother turned out first, and then the mother turned a blind eye when the boyfriend went after Crystal and started getting her high so he could have sex with her. All the mother cared about was getting her daily doses of crack cocaine. As long as she was straight, she didn’t care what happened to Crystal, and that’s how it was. Crystal was staying inside a crack house off of Fifty-seventh and Webster Street. Beverly knew that if Nard could see her now, he wouldn’t believe she was his baby’s mother. Crystal used her pretty looks to get her high, but her looks didn’t last long chasing after Mr. Gusto, and once the streets got hold of her, she was done. Beverly’s only concern was for her grandbaby, Dayanna, whom she and Uncle Ray Ray had taken in and cared for now for over a year and a half. You couldn’t tell Beverly that wasn’t her baby. You couldn’t tell Uncle Ray Ray the baby wasn’t his either. Both felt the same, and Crystal better not even think she would be taking that baby out of that house and away from them, especially the way she looked and was carrying on in the streets. She could stop by and see the baby but Dayanna wasn’t going anywhere.

Uncle Ray Ray opened the door, letting her in. She looked angry and jittery, and smelled like burned sulfur. The scent lingered in the air, radiating off her body.

“Where’s my baby?” she asked with an air of entitlement.

“Donna got her. She took her and Mia to the park.”

Beverly took the papers her uncle handed her that she needed Crystal to sign. Crystal wasn’t a mother, she was too young and too selfish to be a mother, and now with her drug addiction she couldn’t really care less, and did nothing for Dayanna. It was sad to see women willing to sell everything, including their bodies and their young, but Beverly knew in her heart that Crystal would sell her soul just to get high off crack. She saw it firsthand living in North Philadelphia. The neighborhood had turned into a war zone, between the drug dealers fighting over the various blocks and the crackheads running around robbing everybody, nobody and nothing was safe. The block was changing because the people were changing. It was the spring of 1988 and the city was on fire, exploding with a flood of drugs and guns on the streets.

“Crystal, I need you to sign these papers, ’cause I don’t think you understand, but I ain’t called nobody on you leaving this child, ’cause I don’t want to see them lock your ass up, but I got things to do. You not gonna take care of that baby. Somebody has to feed her, clothe her, and provide for her, but I need some assistance and you ain’t doing nothing.”

“And neither is Nard, he ain’t never did nothing to help me.”

She was a real crackhead, and talking to her was a complete waste of Beverly’s time.

“Look, the baby is under this roof, and I need legal guardianship, do you understand? The lady down at the state office building said for you to sign her over and they would be able to give me assistance.”

“Well, what you giving me?” a skinny, nasty mouthed Crystal spat back at Beverly.

“Girl, ain’t nothing to give you, I’m taking care of your baby. You should be giving me something.”

“Well, I need some money and I’ll sign your papers.”

“How much money?” Beverly asked, looking at her.

“Umm, a hundred dollars,” said Crystal, dreaming of how high she could get with that.

“I don’t have no hundred dollars, is you crazy?” Beverly pulled out the money she had in her back pocket, fifty-three dollars.

“Here, it’s yours, fifty-three dollars, you can have it.”

Beverly watched as Crystal took the papers out of her hand and signed over legal guardianship to Beverly just as Donna opened the door, busting through with Dayanna, who was almost three and was walking and talking like she knew exactly what was going on. Holding the door, Donna let Mia and Dayanna through the doorway before she followed them close behind.

Crystal passed the papers back to Beverly and Beverly handed her the fifty-three dollars. Donna watched as Crystal counted the money and stuffed it in her back pocket. Crystal turned, picking up her daughter.

“Hey, munchkin, you know I miss you, right, I do, I do,” she cooed to the toddler before putting her down and leaving so quickly she didn’t even say good-bye.

“That girl is on drugs,” said Donna, looking at Crystal as she walked by her and out the door, fifty-three dollars richer.

Beverly and Donna followed Crystal outside and watched her walk down the street. It would be the last time they would ever see Crystal. She would never return.

“She is a hot mess. It’s so sad that girl messed her life up like that. She really don’t make no sense,” said Beverly, shaking her head. “At least I finally got my papers signed and I can go ahead and get the legal guardianship squared away with the courts and get my welfare assistance and medical.”

“Yeah, get on that right away.” Donna nodded as she spotted her brother Rev across the street.