Chapter 4
EXODUS
“What is this?” Repeated Sereia, glancing from the envelope of money I handed her, back up at me.
“Funeral expenses,” I told her, eyeing her up and down.
She smelled like a distillery. Like she’d been up, drinking all night. Her hair was a mess and she was wrapped in a robe. Took her a minute to answer the door too. Yeah, she got lit last night. Probably too lit.
She squinted. “Umm—
“You can hold the service at the church,” I interrupted, pulling my phone from my pocket. “You got your phone? What’s your number? I’m going to send you Solo’s number. Get with him ASAP.”
She was stuck. Quiet. Eyes centered on the stack, running her fingers along it.
“Yo.”
She looked up at me. “I—I can’t—
“You can. How else you gon’ fund it? Hold a fundraiser in the ‘jects? Where everybody strugglin’? I’m sure brodie didn’t have life insurance. Now ain’t the time to be proud.” I glanced down at my phone and handed it to her. “Here. Put your number in. I’ll have him hit you.”
I was at The Woods, handling something that had been weighing heavy on my spirit since late last night.
Meech needed a proper burial. So, as soon as I got up, I got dressed and headed straight to the bank to pull a cool ten thousand out for it.
Ten was generous, but ten was necessary.
I threw in extra to take the stress of other shit off his sisters back.
I was sure Meech handled a lot around the crib.
Without him, she would be down on her knuckles.
Struggling in the middle of grief would send the sanest muthafucka spiraling. I didn’t want that for her.
“I… Um… thank you. I don’t… um… I’ve never made arrangements before so…”
“Solo will help you with whatever you need,” I told her as she handed me my phone back, with her contact info on the screen.
“Okay. You know… you… you didn’t have to—”
“Don’t mention it. He gon’ hit you in about an hour or something.”
“Okay,” she softly said, the moisture in her eyes building.
From inside, I heard someone whisper, calling her name. It was a dude. She sighed, shook her head and thanked me again. I nodded, told her to listen out for the call and walked off. A couple of seconds later, I heard the door close and right after that, her yelling.
As I jogged down the creaky stairs, my phone went off.
I fished it from my pocket and frowned at yet another text message from Jada.
It’d been two days since she pulled that goofy shit with her pops and she’d been trying to explain her actions since.
She was tiptoeing around the crib too, not recording as much as she used to.
That shit threw me off so bad, I hadn’t looked at her the same way since.
Instead of checking the message, I put the phone back into my pocket and continued towards the whip, head on a swivel. On my way there, I got looks. Heard whispers. Sent a couple of head nods. Exodus Christ in The Woods was a rare sighting.
I didn’t fuck with The Woods. It was full of hood rats, and a bunch of broke ass niggas looking for either a lick to hit or a handout.
Because niggas knew to tread lightly around me, they were never dumb enough to even think about trying me on that lick shit.
They didn’t try me at all—on any level. Niggas knew that if they needed a handout their best bet was to hit Solo at the church.
Not fuckin around in The Woods was more about the environment than it was about the people.
It was dirty. A sad ass sight to take in.
There was a baby in a shitty diaper, crackheads smoking or shooting up, fights and rats at damn near every turn.
The only time I actually fucked around out here was when I was on some community building shit.
Something Solo dragged me into to settle a lifelong debt.
Other than that, you would never catch me posted up out this bitch.
“What up Big Dawg” Spoke one of the fiends.
I chucked my chin. “What up, baby? You smooth?”
She scratched at her arm. “Hell naw. Tryin to get a lil somethin’ from Hood but,” she paused and waved me off. “I ain’t got enough and my credit ain’t good wit ‘em.”
In other words, Hood didn’t want head from her disgusting ass.
Which shit, I didn’t blame him. She had for sure seen better days.
Her light skin was dry and blotchy as hell, covered in dark spots and track marks.
Her eyes was jaundiced, lips crusty, and she was skinny as hell.
She was a mess. Exactly what you would expect a fiend to look like.
“Straight? Must mean you don’t need shit,” I said, getting ready to get into the car.
She approached me. “You ain’t got ten I can hold?”
“Ten you can hold huh?” I snorted. “Hell naw.”
“Come on—
I shot her a look that sent her crackhead ass the other way.
I did a lot of shit but supplying the funds for a mafuckas drug habit was where I drew the line.
When I got into the car, my phone rang. I wasn’t surprised to see that it was Jada. With a deep breath, I dragged my hand down my waves and answered.
“Yo?”
“Now you ignoring me?”
I pressed the start button on the car. “Busy as hell. What up?”
She sucked her teeth. “Too busy to read my messages?”
I didn’t say anything. Sparked fire to the blunt waiting in my ashtray and pulled off.
‘Exodus!”
“Say what you need to say, J,” I said, pulling from the blunt.
“I was just sayin,” she paused, how nervous she was heavy in her tone. “You haven’t let me explain and—
“You’ve explained. Too many damn times.”
“You ain’t hearin’ me tho’, X. I—
“You want me to condone and understand good, bird shit—
“Can you stop callin me a bird?”
“Ain’t that what bird brain bitches do? Post wild shit on social media, seeking attention and validations from mafuckas they don’t know?”
“Now you callin’ me a bitch—”
“Never called you a bitch. Yo… you need something other than understanding and approval?”
“You know what? Forget it. Like I said, you just don’t get it because you don’t be on there.”
I didn’t say anything. The line went quiet.
Jada was a fucking glutton for attention and approval.
The way I hadn’t been in agreeance with the goofy shit she been on was eating her ass alive.
Sometimes I felt like she desired that shit more than she did her next breath.
I wasn’t one for validating or pacifying dumb shit so she for sure was barking up the wrong tree if it was for that.
Especially regarding recording her pops.
“X,” she mumbled. “I need to go back—
“Aight.”
“Can Rocc—
“Fuck no,” pausing, I pulled from the blunt again. “You wanna go out there and record yo cracked out daddy for views, take yo’ self. I ain’t supportin that shit.”
Again, she went quiet before lowly saying, “Okay.”
With that, I hung up, continuing out of the parking lot.
As I cruised down Shady Lane, on my way back across the bridge, I shook my head. Jada, my Jada. I didn’t know what I was going to do with her ass. I would say I couldn’t believe she fell victim to that weird ass internet shit, but I could believe it. She was one of them, and I hated that for her.
Once I got off the phone with her, I hit Kiss and told him about what shorty said about detectives snooping around The Woods.
Yeah, she said some detectives had come through, asking questions.
Detectives I was expecting, honestly. I knew there would be some sort of fallout behind the hit. I was just waiting for names.
Givens and Shields.
I told Kiss what was what and he jumped off the phone damn near immediately to put a couple calls in. When I said I’d have to clean Zeke’s mess up, this was what I meant.
“She said what?” I asked, phone pressed against my ear. “Hol’ up. I’m about to come in.”
I hung up with my little sister Genesis as I pulled into the massive driveway in front of my ma’s crib.
I left The Woods and headed straight for my ma’s.
Pulling up on her was a daily occurrence.
Usually, my first stop of the day but since Meech’s lil’ sister was on my mind, I went there first. After pulling next to Genesis’s Tesla, I killed the engine and got out.
Walking up to the house, I took notice to the flowerbed that needed tending to.
I made a mental note to get in touch with the landscaping company ASAP.
If it was one thing moms didn’t play about it was her yard.
And while she wasn’t in the right headspace to notice it, I still wanted to make sure it stayed straight.
After unlocking the door, I stood in the foyer swapping my twelves out for the Balenciaga slides waiting for me by the door.
She didn’t play about shoes in the crib neither.
Never had. She’d been that way since I was a lil’ nigga and we stayed in the crib on the westside of Brickhaven, on Courtland Ave.
Once my feet were in the slides, I walked further into the house, passing by what should’ve been ma’s office. Except it held a lot of unpacked shit from the old house that hadn’t been touched.
I followed the sound of The Bernie Mac show into the living room, right off the kitchen where Genny sat.
“Hey bro,” said Genesis before getting up from the stool, phone in hand. “Here. Just listen to it.”
“Hol up,” I told her, before stepping down into the living room where moms sat in her usual spot on the couch, big ball of yarn and crochet needle in hand, eyes on the TV.
She might not have been all there conscious wise, but she still loved to knit.
It had to be like muscle memory. And Bernie Mac?
She loved that black ass nigga and wouldn’t watch anything but him.
Walking over to her, I dropped a kiss on the top of her short afro.
“Sweet lady, sweet lady What’s goin’ on? ” I spoke.