12. Turk
Turk
I have a different dad than my sisters. That’s why their last name is Fisher, while mine is Atkins, same as my mama and G-Pops.
Their dad was a community activist. Got cool with my granny, and got in good with my mama that way.
For a while he and my mama were both trying to save our people.
Her focus was always on the kids, though.
She used to organize free tutoring programs, and hot lunches and shit.
One year she even organized an HBCU college tour.
Then she had Rain and Rian, the twins. Renelle came right after. That’s when she started up her daycare in the South Kenton Community Center.
That’s also when their dad got more radical.
If you were to ask my sisters about their dad, they’d yell to the mountaintops he was a martyr. Slain by the Kenton PD for being a Black man. A Freedom Fighter, a husband, father, the best one.
When I got my hands on the unclassified file the government had on him, I read they got that nigga at his side piece’s crib. They also had a manifesto and enough C4 to level a city block.
Regardless, the nigga, like most people, was a complicated muthafucka, and left Ma Dukes with three kids under five.
The Birch looked out for my mama and sisters, though, just like she always looked out for everyone.
She worked tirelessly to get enough grants and donations that the daycare program stayed free.
She’d keep some kids after hours in the Birch if their parents worked late, or like in Set and Nutty’s case, if their parents weren’t all the way there.
And everyone was always fed and clothed.
But, like most people, my mama was flawed.
Her flaw just happened to be seeing the best in the absolute worst niggas.
Let’s go back about twenty-nine years. Ma Dukes has been doing the widow thing for a few years now. Ain’t really been on that, and from what I heard, no one from South Kenton would push up on her out of respect for her late husband.
It’s the night before Thanksgiving, and niggas done stole the turkey out the Center fridge for the community potluck.
My mama, being the angel she is, volunteers to brave the long ass lines to get another.
My sisters stay behind ‘cause they kids, they not tryna get up at the ass crack of dawn for a turkey.
So my mama gets up before the sun to make it to the stores. All the stores in South Kenton–not many at that time, the ghetto is always a food desert–are out of turkeys. No problem, she can go a little further to West Kenton. There will definitely be turkeys in those stores.
Just so she doesn’t waste more time going to multiple stores, she picks one kind of deep in the West, by the expressway. Nice ass, fully stocked at seven in the morning, including the coveted turkey.
Right as she’s getting the turkey, some young niggas run up in the store.
The store was one of those stores that had a bank connected to it.
They’d cased the bank for weeks. It should have been an easy job.
Except one of them shot and killed the security guard.
A simple Thanksgiving robbery turned into a robbery and murder.
The niggas take over the store, locking it down.
There were thirty-seven hostages in the grocery store, including my mama. Twenty of them were released around three in the afternoon as a show of good faith. Another ten at six in the evening. Five more a little after nine.
My mama was the last hostage to be released, well after midnight. The other hostage they learned was in on it, so when the police finally breached the store after my mama was released, none of them were found.
They interrogated my mama for days after, but she maintained her innocence.
She didn’t know them. She was just trying to get a Thanksgiving turkey.
The cameras were down that day, so those last few hours that are known are only from her statement–that they kept them all in the front, and then when it was just her, she was moved to the back office under the supervision of one of the four-person team.
She didn’t know his name. He kept his mask on. He didn’t say anything.
Naturally, they watched her for months, but she had no big purchases, and stayed right in that two-bedroom apartment in Tower Two. Her story stayed the same, even to her own people.
Even when her stomach started growing. Even when about forty weeks after, she gave birth to a big headed, seven pound baby boy. Yours truly. Royce Taylor Atkins.
Her Turkey baby.
I didn’t even know my real name until I went to kindergarten.
Everyone called me Turkey. I was the apple of my mama’s eye and I reveled in it.
We were each other’s best friend. I could do absolutely no wrong in her eyes.
She’d call me her love baby, said I was an answered prayer, made from the purest love on earth, which made me pure.
Speaking life into me like that from birth, it only makes sense how I clung to her, how we clung to each other.
It also makes sense why my sisters were indifferent towards me from the beginning. I mean, their dad is supposed to be our mother’s great love. And then here I come.
And she still never talked about my father. Not until the day before she died. And even then, she only told me two things.
His name was Taylor. And he was the love of her life.
Mind you, she knew the nigga a grand total of seventeen hours. Bro didn’t come to her funeral. And Taylor is a more common first name than I thought.
I don’t have no hard feelings though. Shit, in them seventeen hours, he made my mama feel more alive than she ever did.
He helped make a real nigga, too. And shit, besides the Gross sisters hating on me, my childhood wasn’t too bad.
Met my niggas, met my cinnamon apple, started a gang, made money, killed niggas, made money killing niggas.
I’m getting away from myself.
I been sitting in front of Renelle’s crib for an hour now, trying to remember that even though these bird bitches have a different dad than me, they’re still my blood sisters. And beyond that, they’re women. And I don’t put my hands on women.
And I can’t call Nutty to come slap the taste out their mouths.
Having to reassure my son that I didn’t kill my mama is something I never thought I’d had to do. The only reason I didn’t blow they asses up that night was because that conversation led me into telling Deuce about his grandmother, and it was nice going down memory lane.
For previously said reasons, I don’t bring her up to my sisters. Nut and Set knew her, but it’s not the same. And G-Pops and my mama’s relationship went as far as dropping us off at his house on the weekends.
I hadn’t spoken out loud about her in a very long time, and it was nice. That’s the type of silver lining she’d say always exists.
But still, these bitches gotta see me.
I get out my car and make quick work of them steps. Don’t even gotta knock, Renelle gave me an extra key for emergencies, and this counts as one.
I go inside and what do you know? Tweedletee and Tweedledumb are on the couch vegged out like the bums they are.
“Damn,” I smirk, “it’s not even noon and y’all look smoked out.”
Their faces twist up at the same time as they both fold their arms.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Rian spits.
“Ain’t I a drug dealer? I’m wherever the fiends at baby.” She throws a pillow at me and I dodge it, cackling. These bitches are sad.
Renelle comes from the back. “Turkey? What are you doing here?”
“Well, Deuce seems to have overheard these crackheads saying I killed Ma.”
“Well, you did,” Rain mumbles. She’s always been scary, letting Rian be her mouthpiece.
“Tell that lil nigga to mind his fucking business. You soft on him like Ma was soft on yo ass and look how you turned out.”
“Rian–”
“Nah, Nellie. Tell me sis, how did I turn out? A multimillionaire, business owner? And what are you? A functioning addict, baby mama–”
“Oh please,” Rian yells, standing up. “You got a baby mama yourself. Bitch don’t even want you, picking you up and putting you down whenever she want. Bitch ran to pussy ‘cause she don’t wanna be with your sorry ass.”
I couldn’t help the grin that spread on my face. “That’s twice now you’ve called Autumn out her name. Watch that shit before I forget we related.”
“We wish we could forget we’re related to you! You’re the reason our mama’s dead!” Rain hops up and runs to the back of the house with Nellie following her like she always does. This ain’t the first, second, or third time me and Rian have had it out.
“What you gone do, huh Turkey? Kill me? I wouldn’t be the first woman you killed. Evil muthafucka.”
Rian’s eyes filled with hate-fueled tears. She’s damn near vibrating with rage. She truly believes the venom she spits at me.
I sigh and rub on my eyebrow. “Ma had MS Rian. I didn’t kill her, bro.”
“You did. She was so obsessed with you. You were so fucking needy she neglected herself until it was too late! You killed her!” Her little fists ball up like she’s about to run up on me.
My shoulders curl inward, buckling under her verbal assault for the first time.
“You killed her Turkey. You’re cancer. Your father did God knows what to her in that store, and you finished the job! I wish every day she aborted you. I wish every day she never went to that damn grocery store! I WISH YOU WERE DEAD INSTEAD OF HER!”
“Rian!”
I don’t see Renelle come back into the front room. I can’t do anything but glare at my oldest sister proclaiming her hatred of me, and wonder why now the words have stuck to me.
Or maybe they’ve always stuck.
“Oh please, Renelle. You wish it too!” She waves Renelle off before focusing back on me. An evil grin spreads on her face as tears and snot mar it. “Every woman in your life sees what Mommy couldn’t. They see you for what you truly are; poison.”