Hittin' the Bricks: An Urban Erotic Tale (5 page)

India had tears running down her face. She put her arm around Eva and kissed her on the cheek. “You been through a lot, Eva,” she sniffled. “I didn't even know you had all that hurt inside you. You can't even see it from the outside.”

Eva shrugged. “Everybody has pain, I guess. Like Miss Threet said, life can only hurt until it starts feeling good. Well, I'm feeling good now and I feel pretty lucky too. I got away from my mother and I know where my son is. He turned four this year, and every now and then I take the train down to Brooklyn. Sometimes I'm lucky and I can spot him playing with the rest of Miss Threet's foster kids right outside of building 420. You should see him, Indy He is
so
cute. He has the same kind of birthmark under his chin that I have under mine, and he looks just like me.”

India shuddered. “I feel bad for you and your son, Eva. Somebody shoulda kicked your mother's fuckin’ ass. Letting her niggah do all that crazy shit to you. Foul bitch!”

India was right, but a part of Eva still had a hard time separating herself completely from Rasheena. “She had a lot of pain in her life too,” Eva defended her mother. “I think it fucked her
up real bad when my father got killed. It seems like she just lost hope after that.”

By the time they were finished talking about life, the streets, drugs, and misery, both of them were exhausted and they still had their drug- lord problem.

“That's why I hated it when you started fuckin’ with Saint, India. I would come up here and take Rosa downstairs a lot because I can't stand drugs, or drug dealers. Anybody who's ever around them, even a little bit, is bound to get fucked up. And that's another reason you gotta leave too. India, you gotta get outta here before you get fucked up too.”

“You really think I can get outta Harlem without Saint and his boys getting hold of me?”

Eva nodded. “Yeah. I do. Saint is gone be out handling business tonight, right?”

“ Uh- huh. He's supposed to be meeting his man at a joint near Taft at two a.m. That's what I heard him telling his boy Hassan this morning.”

“Good. He's probably on his way over there now. All we gotta do is call a cab and get you outta Harlem before he gets back. I try to save all the money I can get my hands on, you know, so I can send it to Mrs. Threet for my son, but this is an emergency, India. I don't have a whole lot to offer, but whatever I have you can get it. Every dime I've got in the world is yours.”

India got a look on her face that was full of hope and gratitude. She was young and beautiful, and she really wanted to believe that she could get away from Saint without being killed. Eva helped her pack a few clothes in a white Donna Karan tote bag. She took a few pictures of her dead mother and Rosa off her mirror and stuck them down in her pocketbook, and Eva frowned when she saw what else her girl was packin’ in there.

“You holding heat now too?” Eva said incredulously. She musta really been sleeping on India's game because suddenly her girl was into shit that Eva didn't know nothing about.

She shrugged. “I was out there riding dirty. I'd be scared outta my mind on those upstate runs. You never can tell what you might run into on the road.”

“Um,” Eva said sarcastically. “How about you might run into the goddamn state police? Don't you know it's a mandatory one- year sentence for a gun charge in New York? Where'd you get that shit from anyway? I know Saint didn't give you no tool that you might turn around and use to cap his ass with.”

India shook her head. “Nah. I bought it off a dude I know over on Saint Nick. I heard he was the best person to buy from in Harlem because all his tools are clean.”

India slung her pocketbook and her tote over her shoulder and they prepared to sky up. Then she walked into the living room and leaned over the wheelchair and kissed her father's cheek.

“Bye, Daddy” she said softly. “Eva's gonna take care of you and Rosa. I promise, I'll be back soon.”

Mr. Jackson came out of his fog long enough to whisper something and pat his daughter lovingly on the hand, and when India turned back toward Eva there were tears on her cheeks.

“Let's go,” she muttered, and Eva knew how hard her friend was fighting to be strong. India didn't wanna leave her family, but she didn't wanna
leave
her family either, ya know?

Eva was walking just ahead of India and their heels were click- clacking down the stairs when they got bum- rushed. That big niggah Saint was a huge blur as he ran up the steps toward them, knocking Eva down and catching India about halfway down the flight.

“You lost my shit?” he menaced, but before India could answer him that maniac started swinging.

India screamed. She held her hands out and went into a squat. Saint swung her by the hair and slammed her face into his knee. India's nose busted. Blood squirted out in an arc. Her bag and purse rolled down the stairs and she went tumbling after them.

Eva's body went into survival mode. After years of abuse back in Brooklyn it was second nature for her to try to save her own ass. Cursing and screaming, Saint followed India down the stairs, and Eva followed Saint. He stopped at the bottom to continue fucking her up, and Eva ran past both of them as fast as she could. By the time she realized that she had abandoned her girl, Eva was already on the second floor.

Breathing hard, she forced herself to turn around. India was screaming and crying at the top of her lungs and Eva wanted to go back and help her girl, but … she had gone halfway up to the third floor, and she was begging her feet to go up the rest of the way when a loud
cap!
rang out.

Instantly, India went silent.

Survival was a motherfucker!

Eva turned back around and started running back down the stairs again.

Saint cursed and she knew he was coming after her.

There was no time to dig in her purse for her apartment key, and if she managed to make it out the building he'd shoot her down like a dog in the streets. Without hesitating, Eva dove into the incinerator room and wormed her way under a whole slew of plastic bags overflowing with rotting garbage.

She could hear Saint's footsteps. He was looking for her, and he was gonna give her some of the same damn thing he had just given India. Eva was breathing hard and her heart felt like it
weighed a hundred pounds. She was suffocating under heavy bags of stank, putrid garbage, and the foul smell was making her choke and gag.

Eva squeezed her eyes closed and made herself go limp. It was a trick she used to use when she lived with Rasheena. It was almost like going into a nod without being high. It was Eva's self- protection. It calmed her down and helped her escape the insanity of everything outside of her control.

Saint stormed up and down the hall. He was looking for her. Eva heard his footsteps fading, like he was going back up the stairs, and then they got louder again. Closer. Like he was coming back down. She lay there quietly in her self- protected world as his footsteps got even closer. And then they stopped.

He was standing outside the incinerator room.

Eva heard him breathing hard as he stepped inside. He grunted and kicked at a few bags. He picked one up from the top of the pile and Eva felt a rat run across her thigh. She was terrified. Frozen. But she was protected in her own mind. He couldn't get to her. She was limp, so he couldn't even see her.

He stood there for hours it seemed like.

Eva heard an apartment door open somewhere upstairs and a woman laughed in a high- pitched voice. Saint moved then. His footsteps were fast and heavy. They retreated toward the stairs and got fainter and fainter, until she couldn't hear them anymore.

The high- pitched laughter turned into a scream, and Eva fought her way up from the mounds of garbage and staggered out of the dirty room. She ran up the steps as fast as she could, and what she saw hit her in the stomach and boggled her mind.

India lay crumpled on her side. Eva knew it was her, but it didn't look like her. She was unrecognizable. Her face had been
kicked all the way in. Her eyes were open and a pool of blood was fanning out under her head.

“Indy …” Eva moaned. She sank down to her knees beside her girl. Eva was scared to touch her because she didn't want to hurt her, but in her heart she knew India was already way beyond pain.

A sob came from the top of the stairs and Eva looked up.

“Call an ambulance!” she shouted at the old Mexican prostitute who lived next door to India. The old lady covered her mouth and fled toward her apartment. Eva turned back to India, soft cries escaping her lips. The smell of blood sickened her. It gave her flashbacks.

“You poor baby,” Eva whispered and cried. “You poor, poor baby …”

She bent over to kiss her friend good- bye, but there was no part of India's beautiful face that wasn't covered in blood. Eva took her arm and settled for a spot just above her elbow instead, then rose to her feet, grabbing India's pocketbook as she stood.

“I'ma handle that mothafucka!” Eva vowed, slinging India's purse over her shoulder. She took one last look at the lifeless body of her best friend, then ran back down the stairs as fast as she could. Pausing outside her apartment door, Eva heard the faint sound of police sirens in the distance. She took out her key, said a quick prayer for Indy, then went inside and called the 28th Precinct, and dropped a big fat dime on that blackhearted sinner they called Saint.

I
ndia's murder marked one of many turning points in Eva's life.

She had always held on to her dream of having a legitimate career and doing something positive with her life because she wanted to reclaim her son someday. But now, after India's death, everything was different. It seemed like time wasn't on her side anymore. Eva truly understood the old saying “Life is short.” Suddenly she was in a rush to do everything and to do it all immediately.

The first thing Eva needed to do was get a job. Money was real tight in their house and picking up a temp job here and there wasn't getting it. Aunt Milena had agreed to take Rosa in with them, but in reality the little girl was
just one more mouth to feed. The only thing Fiyah cared about was scribbling in his songbook and rapping into the mirror like somebody important was about to discover his ass, and it pissed Eva's aunt the hell off that he wasn't out there earning money on a job instead of wasting time talking shit into a microphone.

Eva loved her auntie and she knew Milena loved her too, but she was a real bitter woman who carried too much of a load. She'd gotten off drugs and had taken care of both Eva and Fiyah, but Milena had expectations of her son that he just wasn't ready or willing to meet.

“Get a fuckin job!” she would scream whenever he grabbed a mic and started blasting his beats. Fiyah would be all up in the living room acting like he was on a stage. All the little Catholic saint statues that Aunt Milena collected would be his audience. They'd sit there staring back at him like his flow was the shit for real.

Eva found a job in midtown working as a receptionist for a printing company. They processed blueprints for architects, and since she was straight outta high school with no skills or nothing, the pay was shitty but it beat having nothing at all.

Sometimes Eva felt like a burden in her house. Don't get it wrong. Aunt Milena never did or said anything to make her think that, and Eva and her had a good relationship, but always in the back of Eva's mind she felt the need to pull her own weight. She wasn't Aunt Milena's child—she was her niece. Milena didn't owe Eva shit. She'd taken her in and helped her get clean because Eva was her brother's only child and Milena loved her. But still … Eva had a mother out there who shoulda been doing all the stuff that Aunt Milena was doing for her. She felt guilty when Fiyah got screamed on for not working and bringing money into the house, when it was
his
house. Eva
and Rosa were taking food out of
his
mouth. And even though Fiyah never once complained or nothing, Eva made sure that each week when she got paid she gave Aunt Milena the majority of her check. She tore off some to send to Mrs. Threet for her son, she held back a little bit for a MetroCard, and she broke Fiyah off a few ends, but the bulk went straight to her auntie.

Eva was at work sorting through the mail one day when her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. It was her old friend Sherri from Brownsville, the one Eva had introduced to heroin when she was twelve. They had reconnected a couple of years back through their boy Reem Raw, not too long after Eva had moved up to Harlem and gotten clean.

Reem and Sherri used to go together back when they were kids, and when Eva ran into him in Harlem he'd given her Sherri's telephone number. That same day Eva had reached out to Sherri to apologize for dragging her into her drug- induced nightmare, and Sherri had forgiven her. Sherri's grandmother still cursed when she heard Eva's name, but Sherri was still her girl.

“Yo. Your moms is in the hospital.”

Eva's heart stopped. As bad as Rasheena had done her, there was still a place inside Eva that had love for her mother.

“Jahden tried to kill her. He burnt her ass up. That niggah made her strip naked, then he poured boiling water all over her.”