King Divas (19 page)

P
rofit pads his way to the bathroom and leans his body against the door's frame.

I don't bother to hide that I'm throwing myself a pity party. “Did you call the cab?”

“Yeah,” he answers softly. “It should be here any moment.”

I nod, having run out of things to say. The silence is excruciating. I want him to leave me alone, yet I also want him to stay and help me figure shit out.

“Do you have any money?” he asks.

“I think I have a couple of dollars in my purse.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a knot of cash. First, he peels off a few bills, but then ends up handing me the whole damn thing. “Here. This should tide you over.”

I remain stubborn. “I don't want your money.”

“Take it,” he insists.

After backhanding the next wave of tears, I swallow my pride and accept the bundle of cash. “Thanks.”

Silence.

I pull myself off the floor and finish cramming the rest of my shit into the bags.

“Are you finished with these?” Profit asks.

I nod and he picks them up and carries them into the living room. I follow him with the last of my stuff. It's another twenty minutes before a pair of headlights sweeps across the window.

Profit looks out and announces, “Your taxi is here.”

Struggling to keep it together, I start picking up the bags again.

“Here. I'll get those,” he says, rushing over.

When I exit out of the house, my eyes burn and my heart feels as if it's being squeezed inside a vise. The driver sees the bags and pops the trunk. Once the bags are put away, I creep to the cab's back door while searching my brain for something to say.

Profit opens the back door and then shifts his weight nervously on his feet.

Unable to take the awkwardness any longer, I decide to keep it simple. “Bye.”

“Do you know where you're going to stay?” he blurts once I climb into the backseat.

“I have an idea.”

He waits, but once he sees I'm not going to tell him where I'm going, he nods again. I reach for the door, but he continues to hold on to it. But when he can't settle on what it is he really wants to say, he settles for, “Take care of yourself.”

“You too.” I tug on the door just as he releases it.

“Where to, miss?” the cab driver asks.

I give him Mack's address.

He frowns. “That's a few blocks from here,” he says, confused.

“There's a hundred bucks in it for you.”

He perks up then. “All right then.” He shifts the car into reverse and pulls out of the drive.

Profit stands in the front yard, watching.

As the cab pulls away from Ruby Cove, I tell myself,
Don't look back.

It's the hardest thing I've ever done.

 

 

I
hate the fucking mall—especially on a damn weekend. It's filled with kids, crowding the food court while they peep each other out like a damn meat market. The thought of picking this bitch Adaryl out of the crowd is already giving me a headache.

“Are you sure that this bitch is here?” I ask Avonte.

“Yep. She works at Foot Locker.”

At least that'll make it easier. “All right. Let's do this shit.”

We all pop out of Avonte's car and head into the mall. The second I step into the place it completes my nightmare. Out-of-shape security guards, old people walking laps, weak men with weak game winking and trying to holler at me. And, of course, the teenagers. Fast girls dressed like mini transvestites and the boys still wearing their pants damn-near down to their ankles, with their caps twisted back. But no flags hung from their back pockets. Nowadays you have to get up close and personal to read brothahs' tats.

The same game, but with a twist.

Myeisha taps me on the shoulder and then points to a bitch up ahead leaving the Foot Locker. “There she go.”

The second I spot her a shot of adrenaline shoots straight to my pussy and a smile stretches across my lips. We follow close behind Adaryl as she makes her way toward the food court. We got to play this shit right; despite this mall being sketchy as hell, it's probably filled with cameras.

With my patience wearing thin, we stalk Adaryl while she hooks up with some friends, none of them Qiana or Shamara. Thirty minutes later, Adaryl puts away her tray and heads toward the girls' bathroom alone.

“Let's roll.”

Avonte, Myeisha, and Erika stand and follow her. Once we push our way through the door I shout to the other occupants, “You bitches, get the fuck out!”

Adaryl whips around, sees my face, and tries to make a run to barricade herself in one of the stalls.

Avonte grabs her by the collar while Erika and Myeisha usher everyone out the door.

“Please. Please,” Adaryl cries. “I don't want to have anything to do with this.”

I shake my head at her terrible lie. “That's not how I remember it. I recall
you
, Shamara, and Qiana approaching
me
to strike a deal.”

Myeisha locks the bathroom door.

Adaryl panics. “It's Qiana you want. I don't even fuck with her no more.”

“Aww. You girls had a BFF spat?” I ask in a fake sympathetic voice. “That's too bad.” I cock my head. “But
we
still had a deal,” I remind her. “I kept my end of the deal. And you bitches pulled a fast one on me. That doesn't seem fair, does it?”

Tears flow down Adaryl's face like a waterfall.

“I asked you a question.”

“N-no. But Qiana doesn't even have the baby no more.”

“What?” I cock my head. “What did she do with it?”

“I don't know. I swear. The cops came snooping around and she had to stash him somewhere—but she didn't tell anyone where.”

I stare at the girl, weighing whether she's telling the truth.

“I didn't think so—but the thing is: I had a talk with your girl Qiana, and she was supposed to set shit right with me the other night. Did she tell you about it?”

More tears. “I-I'm sorry.”

“Sorry that you left me standing there all night like a damn fool? C'mon. You know I can't let you bitches play me. What if that shit got around? I have a reputation to protect. You understand that, don't you?”

“Please. Please. Don't kill me.”

“Kill you?” I laugh and then look to my girls, who awkwardly sputter out a few chuckles. “No. No. I'm not going to kill you. Don't be ridiculous. I need to send a message to your friend Qiana. That's all.”

Adaryl's tears slow and her breathing eases. “Really?”

“You can carry a message for me, can't you?”

“Y-yes. I can do that.”

“Good.”

I look up at Avonte, who produces a bowie knife and hands it to me.

Adaryl freaks.

“Hold her down,” I order.

“No. Wait! Please! No!”

I place the blade under her chin. “Shut the fuck up!”

She clamps her mouth shut, but still whimpers loudly.

“Your ass needs to be happy that I'm gonna let you walk your bony ass up out of here. You start screaming like that again and I might change my mind.”

The whimpering stops.

“Now are you right-handed or left-handed?”

“R-right.”

My smile broadens. “Good. Now to show you how much of a reasonable person I really am, I'm going to let you keep the fingers on your right hand.”

More tears.

“Left hand,” I bark to Avonte and Erika.

They quickly jerk the girl's hand down on the bathroom counter. Remembering how Qiana had begged for time, I relent. Maybe the girl really does need more time to bring the baby from wherever she stashed him at. “And as an added bonus, tell Qiana I'm going to give her a little more time to retrieve that baby. Two weeks. That's all.”

I place the blade over the middle three fingers. “This is going to hurt like hell,” I warn her and then chopped those muthafuckas off.

Adaryl screams.

G
G, Li'l Bit, and I comfort a near hysterical Adaryl. Her left hand is fucked up. LeShelle left her with two digits: her thumb and pinky finger. It gets me thinking of how lucky I'd been in the back of that cab.

“She wants that fucking kid,” Adaryl snaps. “Give him to her.”

“She is going to kill him,” I say.

“So? It's either that or she'll kill all of us.”

“Shhh.” I glance over my shoulder while we're nestled behind a curtain in the Emergency Room. “You want everyone to hear you?”

“I don't give a fuck,” Adaryl says. “Look what she did to my hand in broad daylight at the fucking mall. She knows our names and where we live.” She glances at Li'l Bit. “You too.”

Li'l Bit swallows hard and looks ready to faint.

GG steps in. “So what does she want you guys to do?”

“She set up a second meeting at Hack's Crossing Park. She also gave you two more weeks to retrieve the baby from wherever you stashed him at. But if we don't show up this time and that pop-up bitch is coming for us.”

“Okay. We'll get you out of here,” GG says.

“The nurse says to wait here. I have to file a police report. I couldn't do it at the mall since I passed out.”

“Are you crazy?” I hiss. “You can't file a damn report. We're already on the cop's radar for that hit.”

She frowns like she hadn't thought about that.

 

Still bickering and arguing, me and my girls, Li'l Bit and Adaryl climb into my SUV after leaving the hospital.

“I don't understand why we don't give her the real baby,” Adaryl says. “We done played that bitch LeShelle twice already. She's going to go all psycho on us if we try to do it again.”

I sigh. We've already been over the plan to have a full posse in place so that we can gun LeShelle down and walk away. But Adaryl keeps poking holes in every plan we give her.

“Where is the baby anyway?”

“Don't worry about it. He's safe.” The less information she has, the better.

My aunt Kathy has Jayson. She lives on the other side of town and didn't ask too many questions when I gave her Jayson. She's never had a baby of her own and practically looked at the child like an early Christmas gift.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Adaryl says every other minute.

“Will you
please
shut up? You're really working my nerves.”

“Well, I guess we wouldn't want that, now would we?” She sneers.

“Bitch—”

“Whoa. Whoa,” Li'l Bit shouts, tryna keep her eyes on us
and
the road. “You two calm down. We all need to stay calm so we can get through this shit.”

“We're driving straight into a trap,” Adaryl mutters, twisting in her seat. “What?” she snaps when I twist around and stare at her.

“You really are working my nerves.”

“So what?”

“Okay, you two. Let's act like grown bitches and squash this shit,” Li'l Bit whines.

We don't hear a word our girl is saying. “What the fuck is your problem?” I snap.

“
You
are my damn problem,” Adaryl barks. “The muthafuckin' police have been to my house
twice
asking me about Tyneshia's ass. When was the last time I saw her? Why didn't I report her ass missing? What was her relationship to that other dead bitch you carved up? Tyneshia's people live right next door to me and are lookin' at me sideways because they
know
Tyneshia always mobbed with us—and there you were chillin' with a baby everybody knows you didn't shoot out your fuckin' pussy.”

“Just y'all and GG even knew I had him.”

“Plus Tombstone
and your dad,
Nookie,
and
the train of senior citizen crack hoes he deals with,” Adaryl reminds me, “and everybody at that muthafuckin' Flower party last week. I heard them talking about it. They think Tombstone has a baby momma floating around somewhere and dumped that baby at y'all doorstep.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Lucky for you”

I relax.

“We're on our home turf, but don't act like snitches aren't real,” Adaryl adds. “They
are
—and they have jacked up many of our plans for niggas who thought they were too slick by half. It's a matter of time before that new captain of police and her gang of storm troopers take they asses down to Ruby Cove and toss us into a cell so dark and deep that muthafuckas are going to forget that we were ever born. Frankly, we should've murked that li'l nigga when we had the chance.”

“Don't put this all on me. You had your chance to kill him and you couldn't kill his ass either,” I remind her.

“None of us did. But that didn't stop you from smoking Tyneshia's ass.”

“Fuck that twenty-dollar-weave bitch,” I shout. “I never liked her ass no ways. She hung with our ass for five goddamn minutes and was already tryna rise up.”

“You mean you felt your follow-the-leader position was threatened with our dumb asses, so you popped off and got us in some real shit. Look at my goddamn hand!”

“Pump the brakes on all this whining. For real,” I warn. “Weren't you the one that wanted to be a street bitch—a real gangsta bitch?”

“For the Vice Lords? Hell fuckin' yeah,” Adaryl says. “But for
this
bullshit—hell no!”

For a hot second, I envision blasting this bitch's head clean off her shoulders.

“Well?” Adaryl challenges me. “What the fuck you wanna do?”

“Chill. All this shit is going to be over soon.”

“Fuck that.” Adaryl unhooks her seat belt. “Li'l Bit, pull over.”

“No.” My hand goes to my burner before I even have a chance to think about it. “Keep driving.”

Adaryl's gaze zooms to the gun in my hand. “What? You're going to shoot
me
now?”

“We're going to stick to the goddamn plan. When we're done, everybody can go their separate ways. Cool?”

Adaryl shakes her head. “You ain't hearing shit. LeShelle ain't going to let us walk away. We know too much.”

“She's right.” Li'l Bit chirps her two cents. “I'm starting to get a bad feeling about this too.”

The mutiny is complete.

“Pull this bitch over. I want out. Li'l Bit, you can hang with this crazy, scarred-up bitch if you wanna, but you can count me out. Deuces.”

Li'l Bit eases her foot off the accelerator.

I swing my burner to point it right at her head. “Don't you stop this car,” I threaten.

Shocked, Li'l Bit's eyes triple in size. “Are you crazy?”

“Hell yeah, she's out of her damn mind,” Adaryl yells. “I told you this shit for months!”

“Shut the fuck up.” I swing the gun toward the backseat of the car. “I'm sick of your ass. Who the fuck told you that you were running shit?”

“Nobody elected your ass to run shit either,” Adaryl barks.

I spring up out of my seat, my gun now trained on this reckless bitch who's begging for a bullet. “I don't need an election. I run this shit. Always have and always will. Play your position.”

“Fuck you!” Adaryl thrusts her .38 in my face with her good hand. “I'm tired of
your
shit. Just because Tombstone got rank, don't mean your ass is somebody. You wanna pop off? Then let's do this shit.”

“Y'all quit it!” Li'l Bit shouts, easing her foot off the accelerator again.

“Didn't I tell your ass not to stop?” I make the mistake of turning my attention back to Li'l Bit because Adaryl's stupid ass chooses this moment to fire.

“BITCH!” I shoot back.

Adaryl ducks to the floorboards while my bullets shatter the back window.

“Quit it! Quit it!” Li'l Bit slams on her brakes.

I fly backwards. My head hits the windshield and my back slams against the dashboard. Tires squeal and in the middle of the craziness, I drop my gun and hear it go off one last time before we fly off the road and roll down an embankment that seems to go on forever. Then suddenly everything stops. The car. The screaming. The shooting.