Chapter 2 #3
I ran my tongue over my bottom lip and stared off at the crowd of niggas shooting dice on the sidewalk a couple of houses down.
Instead of paying attention to what they had going on, their eyes were on me.
Q stood in the crowd with them, eyes on me, blunt dangling from his crooked bottom lip, eyebrows furrowed, mean mugging.
I snorted, pinched the bridge of my nose and turned my attention to Jada.
“Nah. Something tells me that funny shit over with,” I said, sitting up. “Come on. I got shit to do. Ain’t trying to be out here all fuckin day on a dummy mission.”
“How you know it’s a dummy mission, Exodus? If you didn’t want to bring me, you didn’t have to. Flat out—”
“Man, shut yo ass up and get out,” I Interrupted, stepping out of the car.
I looked up and down the block, before my eyes landed on Q’s ugly ass mug again.
His shit was twisted. Hadn’t always been that way though.
Before he decided to be a comedian around this bitch, cracking jokes, he was an aight lookin’ nigga.
Could pull bitches, easy. His face wasn’t contorted to what it was contorted to after I went across it with the butt of my blick damn near a dozen times.
Q shook his head, looked away, passed the blunt, and put his attention back on the dice game.
I smirked and walked off, heading up to the house with Jada on side of me.
She threw her hand up at the neighbors on the porch.
Old bitches that couldn’t stand the sight of me.
Shit, I was most hated around this bitch, for real.
Before I did Q dirty, they had love for me.
Every time I came through, they asked about my OG and the family.
Greeted me with sweet smiles and offered me food too.
These days, they didn’t greet me at all.
Just turned their noses up and whispered under their breath.
I didn’t give a fuck. Like I said before, what happened to Q only happened to him because he provoked me.
How? What’d he say? Made a couple of jokes about how I used to be called Church Boy.
Talked about how me and my brothers used to walk around the community with flyers, asking niggas to join the youth choir and volunteer.
Said we used to be corny, rocking suits in the middle of the summer, looking about as hot as the hell we tried to keep them out of.
Nobody laughed. He kept going though. That was who he was.
A clown. A nigga that got off on making muthafuckas laugh.
He thought he was hilarious. And had he been talking about another family, maybe niggas would have cracked a smile.
None of them did. They kept looking back and forth between Q and I, probably confused by the light smile I wore while he told stories everybody had been around to witness.
I let him get off. Let him crack a couple jokes.
But I kept count. Three was my limit. And before he could get the full sentence of the third joke out, I went off in his shit.
Knocked him right on his ass. Didn’t give the nigga time to recover before I went across his face with my gun.
People from the neighborhood swarmed around us.
Niggas tried to pull me off him. Jada did too.
But I didn’t let up. Not until I was covered in blood, he was unconscious and I was satisfied with the way his mouth was chewed up.
I wasn’t ashamed of who I was and where I came from.
I took honor in it. Even then, I was aight with walking around the neighborhood, spreading the gospel.
I did that shit with a smile. I never gave a fuck about fitting in or wanting to be the toughest nigga in the crowd.
I didn’t have to do any of that. Because despite running around the hood with my brothers, with pamphlets and shit, niggas knew what it was.
I was Church Boy. We were Isaiah’s boys.
Pastor’s kids. We might’ve been in church faithfully any time the doors were open, but that didn’t mean we were bitches.
Back then, we fucked niggas up with crosses dangling from our necks, in the same suits niggas talked shit about.
We were religious—not bitches. You’d think Q would have watched his mouth, considering my reputation, but he thought we were cool because I chopped it up with him and helped his momma out with a couple bills.
His jokes might’ve been innocent, but I saw beneath the shit.
He was trying to little boy me. Bitch me. And that would never sit well with me.
Jada and I walked up on the porch and dug around her purse for the key to the house. While she looked, I stood behind her, hands stuffed into my pockets, surveying the block. After a couple of seconds, she unlocked the door, opened it, and a stench hit me as soon as she did.
I pinched my nostrils, shook my head, and crossed the threshold to walk inside.
The house was a mess. There were bottles, trash, and shit all over the place.
The coffee table was littered with beer bottles, drug paraphernalia, unfinished food and a bunch of other shit.
There were bottles of piss scattered around the living room, as if there wasn’t a working bathroom in this bitch.
“I can’t believe this shit,” mumbled Jada, stepping over a mountain of trash.
I could.
She paid professional cleaners to declutter and clean the house a couple of weeks ago.
When she facetimed me, showing me the house after it was finished, I knew she was excited for nothing.
I knew it would only be a matter of time before Johnny came back and fucked the house up like he always did.
Jada didn’t want to admit it, but her childhood home had turned into one of the many crack spots around the hood.
“Daddy!” She yelled, calling out for a nigga that wasn’t around.
The house was too still.
Before she could walk around, I put my arm out, blocking her and stepped in front of her.
“Wait by the door. I’ll look for ‘em,” I told her, before walking away.
With a deep breath, shaking my head, I stepped over a few pieces of trash, walking around the small house. It was murky as hell around this bitch. Dust particles filled the air, needles, and crack baggies were scattered about too.
Glancing over my shoulder, I spotted her pacing with tears running down her face.
She was looking down at her phone, probably getting ready to call the cleaners again.
I couldn’t understand her fixation with this shit.
She should have let it go. The house, the hope, and her piece of shit daddy too.
But Jada wasn’t like that. She clung to things.
I didn’t just know that because she had me buy her childhood home and constantly wanted to come out here and look for her father.
I knew because she clung on to me. Not in a clingy, I always want to be around you way.
But in a way that kept her in this relationship or whatever the fuck you want to call it, for longer than she should have.
I took care of her.
Made sure she was fed, her bank account stayed laced, and her ass stayed in the latest, flyest shit, but I wasn’t a good nigga.
I kept Jada around for convenience and because I felt like looking out for her was an obligation.
Like I said, she was loyal. Held a nigga down.
Was there for me when I was at my lowest. Did a short bid with me too.
But there wasn’t any love attached there. Not on my end.
Anyway.
After going through every room in the house, I made it back to the front door where she had her phone pressed against her ear.
“Yeah. The house on Lanchester. You cleaned it a couple of weeks ago. When can you—huh? You don’t want to? I’ll triple—okay, fuck it then. Unprofessional ass bitch!” She hung up and looked up at me with dipped brows, tears staining her makeup covered face.
“He ain’t here,” I flatly told her, unmoved by her emotions.
“Can we—”
“Yeah, come on.”
“The bitch don’t want to clean the house. I was ready to give her triple what I paid her before. You think you can get a company from Wildermere to come down—”
As we walked out of the door, I shot her a look over my shoulder. Fuck no. I couldn’t get anybody from Wildermere to come down here.
“Hell naw. You know them muthafuckas ain’t coming across the bridge for shit. They don’t give a fuck about money. They laced. You need to just let this shit go.”
She looked up at me with pleading eyes, sighed, and looked away, scratching at the back of her head. “I can’t let it go, Exodus.”
Of course she couldn’t.
Despite growing up in the trenches, with crackhead parents, Jada was hopeful.
That clinging… it kept her delusional, low key.
Clinging, and wanting to live a certain lifestyle was why she got into that social media shit in the first place.
When we were younger, before Instagram and TikTok were a thing, she stayed with her face in magazines like Vogue, Home and Design, and Autotrader, talking about the life she was going to live.
She didn’t strive for it though. Not academically, anyway.
Jada talked about getting with a white man from Wildermere who would fund her entire life and put her parents in good rehabs.
I sat back and listened to her, barely saying shit, thinking like…
this bitch out her mind. Them white muthafuckas in Wildermere wouldn’t look in her direction.
They didn’t have to though, apparently. Because as soon as I came up, most of her dreams came true.
I put her in a crib in Wildermere. I put her in a Benz.
The only thing I hadn’t done and wouldn’t do is put her people in rehab.
Well… her pops. Her momma, Justine, died from an overdose when we were little.
I wasn’t one for clinging. Johnny didn’t want help. Fuck was I supposed to do with that?