Want Some, page 10
“Didn’t I tell you not to come around here?” Flo reminded him.
“You worry too much, girl! Don’t you know me yet? I’ma take that shit to the grave.” Tony looked at her legs an extra-long time. “But you and me got history. That ain’t gon’ change. Just ’cause you don’t want that nigga to know don’t mean I’ma forget.” Tony smiled looking deep in Flo’s dark, lovely eyes until she had to look down at the steps.
It was just like Tony to bring it up every time. Acting like he got extra privileges because they shared this secret. She didn’t appreciate Tony coaxing Charles out to the club either. All that gambling mess and carrying on. Showing up in the middle of the night to collect.
One time Tony knocked on their door real late.
Flo was in her slip. It was what she liked to cook in on hot summer nights. The kind of night all your windows were slung open wide trying to catch a slim breeze. Where you opened the freezer to knock the heat from your skin. That night, Charles and Flo were sitting in the kitchen. He was watching her while listening to Sunday night slow jams. They were talking about their day. Having a glass of wine or two. Charles pouring her a glass. Her pouring his. The oven on and the radio crooning Al Green. The kitchen. Yeah. It was real cozy back then. The kitchen was always the heart of the house. She’d like to sit at her table with one foot on the stove. Bite into a peach; leave the juice on her cheek. She loved the sheer warmth of bread, happily soaking up butter. The dark, simple quietness of a drawer full of spoons. The hunger of forks trying to rest on their napkins. The glass melting wet in her hand.
It was one of those nights she and Charles were messing around in the kitchen. Charles was at the table rolling a smoke, watching her mix the batter for a pie. He liked the way her breasts would shake ever so slightly as she kneaded the dough and how her nipples stood so firm in that satin. Charles got up and squeezed her soft, ample waist.
“Boy, you better quit. I’m trying to cook here,” Flo said.
But when Charles saw her pressing that dough he couldn’t help it. He stood up and circled her waist from behind, lavishly kissing her shoulders. He spread her across the flat kitchen table like Flo was hot margarine on toast. Next thing she knew the Crisco bottle spilled over and Flo felt the warm wet running way down her back, pooling inside her tight thighs. Charles grabbed the bottle and poured it over her stomach. He started kneading her breasts just as she had done the dough.
“You feel so good, baby,” Charles moaned in her ear. Thrusting real nice and easy, the way he knew she liked it. “I could just swallow you whole.”
Flo bent her knees way up to her chest and Charles went deeper inside. She rubbed Crisco on her hands and massaged his wide back, squeezing and kneading his skin. Charles was well-built and caramel, with a wide chest and strapping arms and a six-pack twisted as tight as a radiator cap. Flo had never in her life had a man that damn fine.
Charles pounded her harder and the table rattled so loud Flo was sure it would snap right in half. But she didn’t care. She could feel the raw heat working up from her toes, lingering between the skin in her thick inner thighs and then raging on up toward her gut.
“Wait.” The word barely escaped from her lips.
Charles tried to slow down but it was already too late. He had turned to pure steel; there was no stopping now. Once he got to this point there was no turning back. He was thrashing so strong the table skipped across the floor and smacked against the back wall.
Well, it was right then when they heard a weak knock at the door. Truth was, Tony had been out there for quite a good while. He crouched down and peeked into the window when he saw that the lights were off in all the rooms except the kitchen. He saw Flo’s big legs dangling over the table and Charles standing between them. Tony lit a cigarette and took a gulp from his bottle. He tossed the bottle in the street and it crashed at the curb and then he banged real loud on the door.
Charles threw water on his face and answered the door. Tony saw Flo pulling her robe back together.
“Evening, everybody,” Tony said, walking back toward the kitchen.
“Oh, y’all been making a pie!” Tony looked at the oil dripping down to the floor. “I sure hope I get a piece when you’re through.”
The way Tony said it made Flo suddenly look up. Like maybe he wasn’t talking about no pie at all.
So when Flo saw Tony today she blocked Tony’s path. He was always coming around, sniffing for crumbs. Like a cat you once threw a chicken leg to and now couldn’t get off your porch.
“I wish you’d come down to the club sometime, baby. Trudy been packing ’em in left and right.”
Flo ignored him. Wouldn’t look in his face. “Charles been catching all her shows. I don’t know what he see. She don’t do nothing for me, but I wouldn’t let my man loose with that chick on the stage.” Tony’s eyes twinkled. He let that sink in. He eyed Flo’s hips and studied her breasts. “But she don’t hold a candle to you.”
Flo didn’t wait for him to say anything else. She went in and double-locked her front door.
Tony stared at the door for a real long time. He lit the burnt stub of his halfway-smoked Winston before stumbling back to his car. He stared at the moon and then at his shined shoes.
“As sure as I’m standing up out here tonight”—Tony blew the thick smoke back toward Flo’s door—“I’ma have that damn heifer spreadeagled one day and calling me Daddy again.”
11
Trudy and Ray Ray
“Hey, fat back.”
“Hey, pig meat.”
“Gimme them big suck-me titties.”
A small band of teenage boys lined the sidewalk. They followed her fast strut down the street.
“Trudy with the booty. Come gimme some, girl!”
Trudy tried to walk fast but they circled her body. She had to struggle to keep moving down the block.
“Look at ’em move.”
“Do fries go with that shake, baby?”
“They look like a batcha grape Jell-O!”
The boys gathered tightly around her firm frame.
“Move!” Trudy said, but only a few of them budged.
“Oooh, see, she mad!”
“Look, watch ’em jiggle.”
“Come on girl, we just want to suck ’em.”
The boys busted up laughing and started nudging each other. Some of them had her nude videotape in their rooms.
“That movie’s a’ight, but it ain’t got shit on yo’ ass in the flesh.”
Trudy struggled her best to get past the boys. One sucked a Blow Pop. One held an apple. All of them had big, gaping grins. Two women watched from the safety across the street; one blew a giant pink bubble.
“Leave me alone!” Trudy screamed loudly. She struggled against them. Her nylons got snagged. A seam busted on her tight dress. But she flung out her purse like it was a weapon, swatting their heads until a few scattered back.
She’d almost broken free, but somebody tripped her and she landed facedown on the sidewalk. The boys made a knot around Trudy’s body. Someone grabbed her ass. Someone else twisted her nipple. A slimy tongue entered her ear.
“Get off me!” she screamed. But the boys pinned her down.
Ray Ray stopped his Lincoln in the middle of the street. He sliced through the crowd of boys with his razor-blade eyes. One boy ran off. The others leaned back on their broomstick-thin legs.
“Hey, Ray Ray!”
“What up, cuz!”
“Nigga, when’d you get out, Gee!”
The boys looped around Ray Ray’s muscle-bound body.
Ray Ray scowled at them all. He stared hard at one.
“Ain’t you Smokey’s little brother?” he asked him point-blank.
“Yeah,” the short boy said proudly.
Ray Ray reached down and pulled Trudy up from the ground. He glared at each boy and lit a match to his Newport. He stuck the cigarette way back in his teeth and blew the smoke out real slow. He pulled a leather cloth out the back of his khakis and unwrapped a long steel blade. It shimmered in the cruel, blasting sun. He smacked the Blow Pop out of one of the boys’ mouth. He knocked the apple from the other boy’s fist.
“Pick it up!” Ray Ray said to another.
The worried boy put the apple in Ray Ray’s hand.
Ray Ray started peeling the green apple with the silver blade. He never looked up. He just kept on cutting. He skinned the apple until it was totally clean. The curled skin dropped dead on the ground.
“See, this here’s my homegirl.” Ray Ray pointed with his knife. His steely eyes cut each boy down. “I bet’ not catch one y’all muthafuckas messin’ with her again. Fool around and yo’ mama’s gon’ be pickin’ out caskets.”
The neighborhood boys had fearful respect for Ray Ray. He was an O-G. He’d been to the pen. They all wanted to be Ray Ray’s friend.
“It’s cool, man,” one said.
“We didn’t mean nothin’.”
The boys slowly drifted away.
“You better walk away!” Trudy shouted at their backs. “All y’all can do is try to hijack some pussy ’cause no women with any sense gonna touch ya!”
Ray Ray smiled at Trudy. Homegirl was a trip. Wasn’t but five-three but talked mega shit if you crossed her. He loved sexy bitches like that.
Fact was, Trudy was the only one who’d written when he was in the pen. She didn’t write often. And she didn’t write much, but those letters were what kept Ray Ray together. Kept the monotony of bar after bar from closing in. Kept him focused on doing his time and getting out. No, she didn’t write often but what she did write he read over and over again. Memorizing every word. Rolling over every curve of each letter with his finger. Mumbling each phrase with his lips.
“I appreciated your letters.”
“No problem.” Trudy smiled, pulling her braids from her face.
“A kind word from the outside can take a brother a long way.” Ray Ray brushed a torn leaf off the back of her dress. She looked so good, his whole body ached just to watch her. He wanted to feel her smooth skin against his hot, scalded face. To taste her long braids between his teeth. Ray Ray looked at Trudy deeply, breathing out slow. “Your letters are what kept me alive.”
Trudy didn’t know a lot about his life in prison. Whenever he wrote, large parts were blacked out. But one thing came through remarkably clear. Ray Ray was smart. And he cared for her deeply. He would hide little messages inside the lines. His metaphors gave her a glimpse of the harsh world inside. They were a telephone line to his soul. That wasn’t blacked out. The jailers never found those. CALIFORNIA STATE PRISON was stamped on each letter in red, but Trudy was proud when the postman handed her a letter from Ray Ray. She would spread across her bed and read them alone.
“Girl, I loved seeing my name on those envelopes you wrote.” Ray Ray smiled at her again. “That alone was hope. They made me feel like I mattered. Most of them dudes don’t never get shit. Nobody writes. Nobody calls. Them letters kept me from going off and hurtin’ somebody. I saw brothas snap, every single day.” Ray Ray broke a small branch from a tree. “Yesterday’s gone and you can’t swallow tomorrow.” Ray Ray smiled broadly at Trudy again. “But I could reread your words. They always calmed me down. I’d stop thinking how I fucked up and ended up like this. How I did all this shit to myself.”
Trudy cupped his cheek. He wanted to kiss her hand, but he didn’t. Trudy dropped her hand from his face.
“I wasn’t ready. I had no idea how fucked it was. It was lonely and loud; dudes were always banging their cells, screaming from that four-by-six box. I hated the blackness of ‘lights out.’ All those roaches and sick food.” Ray Ray threw a rock toward the gutter.
“Damn.” Trudy didn’t know what to say. She wanted to touch him again but kept her hand at her side.
“I don’t want to talk about the shit. That shit made me sick.”
But Ray Ray did talk. He was just like a faucet. All the words just gushed out like water.
“Norco separated the prison based on the amount of time served. The hard dudes were all housed at the top. Those were your murderers, multiple rapists and crazies. People doing triple-life and shit. The middle levels held the felons, one-time killers and drug dealers. The lower levels, where I was, were all recently popped. Car thieves, small-time crooks, domestic violence stuff. All of them down there were doing short time, anything six years or less.”
But in California, the prison population had quadrupled overnight, thanks to the new “Three Strikes You’re Out.” Jails were brimming. Prisons had filled to capacity. Some facilities resorted to using old army barracks to deal with the mad overcrowding.
“I remember them first few months at Norco. They housed me and the other guys in a large abandoned army barrack. That old barrack was huge, with bunk beds squashed together. Looked like a Boy Scout lodge, if you didn’t look close. But we had windows you could see through. There was a grassy area with trees. I’d watch birds and squirrels play all the time.”
Ray Ray remembered their early-morning chirps. He’d wake up, keep his eyes shut, lay there and listen. With his eyes closed, he would pretend he wasn’t in prison anymore. Free from bars and the wild, hellish nightmares inside.
“In Norco, the Mexicans and blacks had a war going on. As soon as I got in, a Mexican bashed in my face. Another one caught me and broke my left thumb. But the guard was a brother and had one guy transferred. The other one bunked two beds down the way. I waited half the night working the good hand I had. I ripped a piece of metal from under the bunk. I sanded it back and forth on the rough redbrick floor. I crawled to the guy’s bed on my hands and my knees and jammed the metal piece in his eye. Everybody heard that Mexican guy scream. They took his ass out on a stretcher.”
Trudy winced, but Ray Ray kept talking. “But, man, that barrack shit didn’t last long. One of the inmates tried to escape. There was a mad gunshot hunt that lasted five days. The whole place was flashlights and bloodhounds. But they got him. Found the man way down the interstate, panting underneath an old Monte Carlo. The next day they hacked all those tall redwoods down. Bulldozers came and killed all the bushes and grass. The guards said it impeded their ability to see. The next thing I knew, the whole place was concrete. The birds were all gone and there was nothing outside except barbed wire and chain-link for miles. The nightmares came then. And the constant fighting for your life. I didn’t think I could make it.” Ray Ray shook his head but looked up and smiled.
“But that’s when I got your first letter.”
Trudy couldn’t help but smile back at Ray Ray. She and Ray Ray went back. Ever since the eighth grade. He was a knucklehead even back then. If he wasn’t reading, Ray Ray was doing something to get her attention. Always giving her things. Ballpoints, big giant Frito-Lay bags, Snickers and Milky Way bars by the fistfuls, and wallets with other people’s I.D. His candy-bar skin had the prettiest dimples. Flashed her his naughty-boy smile whenever he got caught.
Back in the day, Ray Ray’s whole family was crazy. All six of ’em shoved in this one-bedroom unit. Mashed in there like some rats. His daddy drove semis, was gone half the time. Nobody was home to control ’em. One brother was gang-banging; another sold crack. Their mama loved to sit in the car with her daughter and talk shit all day and smoke weed. But the streets took a toll on Ray Ray’s whole family. His father fell asleep at the wheel one night and died. One brother was found knifed in a vacant apartment. The other brother got popped and was doing back-to-back life. His oldest sister OD’d on a bad batch of smack. Ray Ray’s apartment, which had always been the loudest part of the street, was as quiet and still as a morgue. They were all gone, everybody, except for his mama, who sat up all day like a zombie. But Ray Ray took care of her. Brushed her thin hair and cooked all her food. Some fools might have left. Couldn’t deal with the trouble. But Ray Ray stood by. He took care of his mother. Trudy had always admired that about him.
But she knew he was wild. Completely untamed and totally street. With that burn on his cheek, he was still super fine. Crazy and sexy as hell.
“Thanks for getting those guys off me,” Trudy said, clutching her purse to her chest.
“No problem,” Ray Ray said, averting his eyes. He could feel the mild warmth from her bronze, even skin.
Trudy shyly let her braids fall into her face. “So how you been doin’? How’s it feel to be out?” Trudy could feel the warm-oven pull too.
“Feels like I don’t never want to go back!”
“I heard that,” Trudy said. It felt good being with Ray Ray. With him she could be her natural free self. He was easy and clear as cool water.
“How’s your mother gettin’ along?” Trudy wanted to know.
“Same ol’ same ol’,” Ray Ray told her. “Moms and me still kickin’ it. We doing our best to stay up.” Ray Ray flashed her one of his rarely seen smiles. “I appreciate you stopping by to see her sometimes. That meant a lot to me, girl.”
When Trudy smiled back, Ray Ray’s whole body throbbed. He strained against the strong urge to grab her and kiss her. But Trudy used to be Lil Steve’s woman. Lil Steve was his friend. It meant she was off-limits. So he held in his feelings. Kept his emotions in check. He stayed as cool as a Canadian lake. In prison, you learn quick not to show your emotions. If you did, those fools used them against you.
“You tell me if anybody messes with you, girl,” Ray Ray said with a hint of mad dog in his eyes. But when he looked in her face, his hard eyes went soft. His thick lashes fluttered back toward the ground.
“I will,” Trudy said, looking away. She could feel the soft pull of his eyes on her back. But Trudy knew how to cover her emotions too. She could be as calm as a mannequined window.
“Just lay low, Ray Ray. You’re out, so be cool. Don’t do anything dumb. And stay the fuck away from that fool Lil Steve.”
“Lil Steve’s all right. You know that’s my boy.”
“He’s a punk,” Trudy shot back.
Ray Ray threw another rock to the other side of the street. He never liked that Trudy was with Lil Steve. It cut him. It tore the pink meat of his soul.
