23. Turk #2
I park my rental across from a nondescript brick building deep in East Kenton and turn off the engine.
“Don’t start no shit in here, Turk. That gun talk starts and ends in my songs.”
“Shut up, girl. We in and out, I just need to talk to a couple people.”
I get out and round the car to open her door. She narrows her eyes at me after she fixes the ice blue faux fur jacket she put over her corset. “Talk… riiiight.”
I bend my arm and hold it out. She slides her hand in the crook of my elbow and we walk across the street, skipping the line.
Wyn lifts her nose high and flips her hair behind her when we get to the bouncer. We don’t even stop walking; he just unhooks the velvet rope and we stroll right in.
It’s a sea of white and blue throughout the darkened space. Kendrick Lamar is blasting as we weave through them toward the back.
If there was furniture, they moved it all for the dancefloor that overflowed from the DJ booth in the back to the crowded bar. But Wyn’s leading me diagonally through the partygoers.
Finally, we make it to the edge, where some couches are set up. I smirk when I see all them G$ muthafuckas, but it spreads to a grin when I see my sister on Grimey’s lap without a care in the world.
The Native nigga without the face tattoo sees me first, and says something to the big nigga before they both eye me. The big nigga looks pissed, but the expression on the Native nigga is unreadable.
“Hey, y’all!” Wyn sings. She floats over to Cochise, pulls the girl sitting on him to the floor, and takes her place. “Fancy seeing you here, lover. How’s your arm?”
Cochise just chuckles like he’s used to her antics and circles her waist.
When I focus on Renelle, all the color drains from her face.
“The fuck this nigga going here?” the Native nigga with the tatt says.
“I’m just here to speak to my sibling.” I hold my hand out to Renelle.
She looks like she’s debating herself before she reaches out and places her hand in mine. I help her up and when she’s close enough she clings to my arms.
“Turkey? What are you doing here?” she says in my ear over the music.
“You knew Patience and Grimey had history?”
I lean back to catch the fear that passes through her eyes before she squeezes my arms.
“You shouldn’t be here, Turkey.”
An arm wraps around her chest and she backs up some into Grimey. “Yeah, Turkey. You shouldn’t be here, cuz.”
His friends are standing behind him, too, and I feel muthafuckas shuffling to surround me.
But I keep my eyes on my sister. She wraps her hands around his forearm and lifts her chin like that’s her nigga.
“It’s like that, Nellie?”
“She not finna answer you, cuz, so I will. She hate yo ass. Prolly more than yo other sisters. Niggas around here ain’t even know she had a kid brother. Don’t know how many times I've heard her cry about how yo daddy took advantage of her mama, and how you somehow made her mama sick or some shit.”
Renelle’s ass is just standing there, staring at me, listening to this nigga talk. She don’t even hear the tone in his voice. She think he vibrating because he wanna handle me. Meanwhile, it’s prolly taking everything in him not to snap her neck.
“It’s somewhere we can talk in private?”
Renelle starts to open her mouth but Grimey knows I was speaking to him. He whispers something in her ear before letting her go, and motioning for me to follow him past the DJ booth.
I glance at Wyn, and where I thought she’d be checked out like usual, her narrow glare is on Renelle. She glances at me, and when I nod, she starts taking off her fur.
When I turn to follow Grimey, I hear Renelle yelp and I know Wyn got on her ass. She never fucked with Renelle like how Autumn did, so Grimey saying all that shit finally gave Wyn a reason to dog walk her like she wanted to.
Wyn can’t even fight foreal, but shit, neither can Nellie’s ass.
Grimey leads me down a more quiet hallway before stopping at a door and a familiar face.
I look away so I don’t grin at Rico’s ass, looking every bit a G$ nigga, standing guard.
Grimey just nods at him and Rico opens the door for us all stoic and shit.
How he doesn’t know every member of his gang? I don’t know. It’s clearly too many of them muthafuckas.
Rico closes the door behind us and immediately I notice the conference room table and the portrait on the western wall.
It’s of three men. The one in the middle is old as hell, with his white hair in two braids and has tribal tattoos on his face and neck that disappear into his suit.
The man to his right is younger, probably a little older than I am now, and looks more Black than Native, with his curly hair pulled back in a ponytail.
The man on the left is the youngest, and wears his hair loose and wavy around his head. He’s not in a suit like the others, but still dressed formally, and scowls at me.
“That’s Peter Geronimo, our great-grandfather,” Grimey points to the man in the middle before sitting down in front of them. I took a seat opposite him.
“He only had a daughter, our grandmother. She’s still kicking it at our estate. Married a nigga from East Kenton but he was an alcoholic and ended up running into a ditch when Pops was a youngin.”
“Which one is he?” I motion to the portrait behind him.
He looks back before turning back around and smirking at me.
“The young nigga not wearing a suit… Pops was always in the streets. The Geronimos have always been enforcers, but we didn’t incorporate the gang culture of California until he got in good with the other crips in East Kenton.
Started G$ in high school with his friends and soon he had a whole army. Got Uncle Geri in it, too.”
“I ain’t really come here for this. I’m not some lost lil nigga who wants to know about the daddy they never knew. I know enough.”
Grimey folds his fingers on the table. “And what do you know then, Turk?”
I go to rub my eyebrow but stop and shrug.
“Nigga was wild as fuck robbing a bank on Thanksgiving morning. Met my mama. Made me in the back, and then dipped out. Whatever he said to her had her thinking she was the love of her life, but I’ve never met him, and now I know for a fact the nigga’s dead.
“But Ma Dukes loved me enough for the both of them. Ain’t picture perfect, but it’s been enough all this time, and implying it’s not is a slap to her face.”
Grimey takes a second to digest what I said before shaking his head.
“You know, I spent years looking out for you from afar, trying to figure out how to bring you around without putting Renelle’s thirsty ass on game.
I had all these assumptions about you, but I should have known you’d be thorough like us. You a Grimes fasho.”
I lean on the table. “Being thorough is holding a lady hostage in an engagement she don’t want?”
His jaw clenches before he blinks and grins. “Fox and I had a disagreement and she overreacted–”
“By changing her name and moving away for almost twenty years? Even if she didn’t have a belly full of my seed, I’d be right here telling you to give it a rest, Foe.”
“Look. The only reason I haven’t killed you is because you’re my lil bro, and I’ve grown attached to looking over you.
And the only reason I ain’t murked everyone you know and love is ‘cause unfortunately Fox is attached to they ass, too. But hear me when I say this, nothing, not you, or that baby in her stomach, is keeping me from being with my chieftainess.”
Yeah, this conversation is done.
I stand and straighten out my white tee. “My G-Pops always said I hear what I want to. You enjoy yo party. Thirty-five is a big year.”
Grimey scrunches up his face but I just wink and back out the room. A nigga that delusional, he not gone hear me, and it’s a waste of my time spelling it out. I’m a better shower than a teller.
When I open the door, Renelle’s simple ass is there, hand raised and poised to knock. For the first time, her true feelings of me show on her face, but there’s that fear I latch onto and use to tower over her.