“I am ready to help you, Daddy. I’ve just gotta grab my phone and headphones.”
“Okay. I’ll be downstairs. Hurry up, and make sure you do not get into no more shit with your momma.” He shook his head and leaned back in the rocking chair with Benzie pulling on his beard. “Y’all two are worse than the knuckleheaded niggas I deal with in the streets.”
* * *
Benzie was lost in his favorite cartoon when I walked past his door, headed to the basement, which was Calvin’s man cave and where he and his crew met to hook up product. He had an eighty-six-inch television mounted on the wall, a fully functional bar, and ten reclining theater seats. Half of the room was laid out as a movie theater and the other as a living space that included a kitchen and bathroom.
Our house was big as hell because it was not built to be a single-family home. It was originally a four-family flat, but my father purchased it from a cokehead who was in debt to him for a few sacks he had been fronted. The guy signed over the deed to spare his life, and then my father renovated the entire house and customized it to fit his trapping lifestyle. We had eight bedrooms, four bathrooms, and two kitchens that I had to keep clean.
“Hey, niece. I’m glad to see you are alive,” my godfather, Fame, joked when I walked into my dad’s man cave to find him, my dad, and one of my dad’s workers.
“I keep telling her to stop playing with her crazy-ass momma,” my father jumped in, agreeing with his best friend. “Fuck catching some heat from one of these young niggas trying to come up through the hood. My own wife and daughter are going to be responsible for dropping me to the grave.” My father always tried to get Trinity to chill on me, but it only worked when he was around.
“Y’all won’t be joking in a few months when I’m grown and on my own.” I sat down at the table across from Fame and one of my dad’s veteran workers.
“Girl, you ain’t never going to be too grown to catch a foot up your ass from Trinity.”
“Naw, not at all. But enough about that, let’s get to grinding and get this weight packaged up and on the streets. The drought is officially over.” My dad took his seat beside me.
Sliding my mask over my nose and lips, my gloves on, and my wireless earbuds in, I turned on a hip-hop playlist, then joined the guys on the assembly line. It was usually me, my mom, or sometimes Fame’s first baby momma whenever he and she were getting along, but I was solo-dolo today. I was cool with the responsibility, though. My pops taught me how to operate within every position like a boss, even the chef. “If you know how to feed a fiend, you will never be broke.” His survival teachings were embedded in my membrane.
My dad, Fame, and the other worker scooped the appropriate amount of grams into the baggies, and then I made sure the yellow baggies were sealed, in bundles of ten, and in Ziploc bags of one hundred. We never finished with fewer than ten bags, and no one dared to move from the work area until we were completely done. The only person to bend that rule was my dad, and only I or my mom were allowed to have bathroom breaks. Everyone else had to piss in cups with their backs turned to us. Calvin barely trusted himself, so trusting others was out of the question.
“Are you good, Porsha? Or do you want me to call Trin down for some help? This shipment was packed with more weight than the others since the streets been dry.”
“I am okay, Daddy. You know I’m not trying to split my money.” Calvin paid $50 an hour for this position.
“You are a mess, baby girl.” He laughed.
“Dad, I’m not a baby. I am a few months shy of being eighteen. And I would really like that car I asked you for.”
He laughed harder. “You are not mentally ready for a foreign whip, P. You are not about to get me sued for tearing up some shit in an accident.”
I smacked my lips with attitude. “But let it be a drive-by, I can whip the Audi all day.”
“Now I see why your momma wants to go in ya shit.” He shook his head.
“Well, since I’m heading down a dead end on the car subject, let me know if I need to give you a list of things I like, Godfather.”
Fame laughed. “I do not need a list. I’ma put a few bills in ya hand to set you straight, though. I swear, whatever nigga you be with better have some long money and deep pockets,” he joked seriously.
“You damn right. Whatever muthafucka I let roll with my baby better be coming with more than that,” my dad said, jumping back into the conversation. “We ain’t playing with no lightweights. Ain’t that right, Porsha?”
I giggled. “I don’t know. I might have to if they have a car.”
“Fuck around and get a dumb nigga murked, Porsha. You already know I am not about to let you bring no chump ass into the fold.”
Calvin had no idea I had a crush on a dude who was already part of the fold, and I had every intention of keeping it that way. I would not make it to my eighteenth birthday if he found out I was creeping around with one of the dope boys from his main crew. Elvin “Street” Thomas had my young ass wide open, mind, body, and soul. I tried not even thinking about Street when I was around Cal or Fame because they would put a bullet in his dome, dick, and heart if they knew he was stroking their precious Porsha.
Finally, after two hours, the last batch of baggies was sealed up and ready for delivery. I was hella anxious to get out of the house, especially since Imani had hit me up an hour ago and said the field by her house was starting to jump. Imani lived on the same block as one of my father’s main trap houses. And once upon a few years ago, the field housed three different homes. But after the homes were abandoned and stripped down for years, the city tore the blight down, and we all turned it into a hangout spot.
CHAPTER 2
PORSHA
Back in the day when my father stayed on the block trapping all day, Imani and I used to ride bikes and jump rope together. She was my first real friend. That was before Nikola moved to the hood and started at our elementary school. She made our duo clique a trio one day during fifth grade recess, and it’d been that way since. There weren’t a lot of females I could tolerate, and Nikola was a lot like me. She and I got into more fights than Imani did.
Anyway, I knew the field was about to be jumping because the spring season was breaking through, and the sun was out. In bitter-cold-ass Michigan, we didn’t need it to be ninety degrees for us to hang outside. We were used to the bitter cold. It was about to be like an amusement park for thots. Although I didn’t fit in the category of a neighborhood freak per se, I could act little dehydrated at times, or a lot. I always acted out of character when I was around Street, though.
Street was 24, a certified thug, and reckless as fuck. His name fit him perfectly with his roughneck ass. He was gritty and straight gutta, just how I liked ’em. Day in and out, he hustled hella weight for my dad that helped feed my family. He moved more weight and made more pickups from my house than any other hustler from my dad’s team. Calvin stayed bragging about Street’s list of savage qualities and even labeled him a lionhearted moneymaker. My dad might’ve preached that he wanted a different type of man for me, but all I homed in on were Street’s thug accolades.
“Daddy, can I go over to Imani’s house after I give the last runner his package?”
