Chapter 4
FOUR
Posydiann
A few weeks later
Time never mattered to me, given I made the most of whatever moment I was in before I found myself in it.
Nothing came to a sleeper but dreams and bills.
Even when I did sleep, I felt like I was wasting time, like there was so much other shit I should have been doing.
It pissed me off to need something so vital in this life, something as simple as sleep.
Moments of stillness. I left my bed at five this morning and found my way to the couple traps we still owned, checking to make sure shit was still moving.
Funny enough, they didn’t expect me. Shit, I didn’t even expect myself.
I had long ago surpassed this stage in life, but for some reason my sleep pattern hadn’t.
My everyday habits had but also hadn’t. I hugged the blocks of Watertown from the ripe age of thirteen until I was sixteen and had enough, then I spent eight months behind bars right after my son was born and decided there had to be something more.
The streets had to bow to me because I was done playing them the ways the ones before me had.
Those included a father I had never met because he was gunned down on the very streets I wanted to master.
They said a gang was composed of individuals with intent to commit violence and cause destruction.
The infamous Waterboys was an idea I came up with when I was too fucking young to know what a street gang was.
It was my way of surviving the very streets deemed unsurvivable by many.
What started out as a few young bulls from west of the water had grown into a movement that surpassed anything a gang could ever be seen as.
Waterboys were more than a gang. It was survival, family, and most of all, space.
Regardless of what it was seen as now, I knew what it was.
To Briar South, Watertown was nothing more than an eye sore, so that was why they let any and every fucking thing happen because the true desire was for those like me to kill one another, handing over a space blessed by our ancestors to motherfuckers who didn’t belong.
“Yo, what the fuck you be doing up this time of morning, Psy?” Killah’s voice made me look away from the people loading up chairs and tables into the truck to him.
“Shit. You know I don’t sleep. What are you doing over here?”
“Tylon called. Shipment came through early; they’re about to unload.” He leaned over the banister, staring at the movement.
I nodded. I didn’t start Waterboys alone. Shit, never really did anything alone in the streets. Killah, my cousin—fuck that, my brother—stepped into any pile of shit I did. When I moved he did, and vice versa. We’d been this way since youngins with more ambition than funds.
“Heard some fool off Hollis and Ninth was claiming he’s the new head of Rich Jordan’s shit,” he said randomly.
I laughed. “What is he running?”
“Hell if I know. Maybe outskirts. Low end but not a motherfucking thing in the center of the water.”
I shook my head.
“They have been delusional since Iso made it clear he wasn’t stepping back in,” Killah responded.
“Smart. I don’t blame him.” I nodded. After all that shit happened with his old man and him faking his death, Iso was true to his word, leaving the streets in his rearview. I respected that because he never felt like he owed these streets his life and he made that clear.
“Hell. Him and CIA Barbie made another baby. I saw him in the store a few days ago.”
I laughed. “Yo, what the fuck? CIA Barbie?”
“Hell yeah, that’s what she is and what she looked like.” Killah shrugged, not seeing anything wrong with what he said.
“Yo, I hate your ass dead serious.” I couldn’t hold back the laughter because he was right. Shorty was pretty and extremely lethal.
“The fuck I do. I can’t imagine laying up with a motherfucker more deadly than me. I don’t even trust abortion warriors. It’s your body, your choice, but baby, you got bodies.”
“It’s too early for you, man.”
“Ain’t too early for the truth at all. When Junnie went and got her shit done, I was supportive and all that, but at the end of the day she knew she caught a body.”
“You need help, like real psychiatric help,” I responded, walking toward one of the offices I usually occupied when I was out this way.
He followed me, taking a seat on the sofa after I sat at the desk.
“So, what’s up with you and Sis? You trap her yet?” he asked randomly, making me look up from my phone.
“Ay, yo.”
“What? I’m asking. Already got a nephew who just hit me for fifteen hundred for a fucking pair of shoes. Tryna see if you boutta hit me with a niece too.”
I shook my head. “You are the only person I know crazy enough to give him that much bread for those shoes too. I told his ass when he starts needing shoes that cost that much it’s about time to get some applications in somewhere.”
He laughed. “Says the motherfucker who has him enrolled in a private school in Uptown where they wear those fucking shoes and don’t want him to get a job. That’s your son, but you gotta figure how you want him to grow, bro.”
“What do you mean?”
“Means it was all cool when he was about eight or nine, but he’s boutta be a man.
I know damn well you don’t want him playing in the same streets we did, so I get the change of scenery and all that, but he’s also coming up around those motherfuckers.
So it’s natural for him to want a car and all the shit he sees up there.
That’s where he is most of the time, Psy. ”
He made sense, which had me narrowing my eyes. “You must’ve just come from Jordyn’s?”
“Hell nah. I got original thoughts. But like I asked, you trapped Sis yet?” That playful grin was back at his lips.
“I ain’t gotta trap what’s mine. We talked and she knows where I stand.”
He laughed. “Ol’ whipped ass. Where do you stand? Communicating and shit instead of making it happen the old fashioned way. Aight.”
“Yo, you always talk about trapping somebody. You ain’t trapped Jordyn yet. Practice what you preach, hoe.”
“How do you know I didn’t? She blocked me and I got her phone cut off. Can’t nobody call her ass now.”
I laughed at him even though I knew he was dead ass serious.
“What are you getting into today?”
“Nothing honestly. I thought Unc’s appointment was today, but it’s Saturday. He’s talking about needing to get a flu shot. Who the fuck schedules flu shots?”
“Old heads like him.”
I laughed hard as fuck because he was right. Unc was serious about his flu shots and vaccines, which I found to be extremely comical because he had the strongest distrust for the government.
“But on some real shit, Kal hit me up. He said he’s in town and needs a word and some motion.”
“For real? You know Kim moved his ass to Westmere and turned him into a bear.” I sat up in my seat.
Kal Turner used to be heavy into the street shit until he had a few kids and his wife gave him an ultimatum.
He left Watertown so fast he left tire tracks.
The funny thing was, he still worked out this way from time to time, but never strayed too long.
“He said that ain’t work out, but that’s your conversation to have with him.”
I nodded.
We talked for a while longer, then I had to head out. I was on my way toward the crib when Carla called. It wasn’t too unusual because she checked in with me weekly but talked to our son several times throughout the week.
I sat back in the seat and closed my eyes for a second. “What’s up, Carla?”
“You sound like you’re not sleeping again, Psy.”
“I’m straight. I got up early this morning. You must’ve talked to your expensive ass son.”
She laughed. “Nope, not today. What does he do?”
“Talking about a fucking car and he got Killah buying fifteen-hundred-dollar shoes.”
She laughed even more, a cough escaping her lips, letting me know she was smoking. Carla never escaped smoking without the coughing fits. Shorty had been that way since we were young. “Yo, that’s your fault, sending him to that school. I told you he could come here with me.”
“Nah, you should’ve told him he had to come there with you, not giving him a fucking choice.”
“What, so I could look like the big bad wolf and you be the best friend? Hell nah. You ain’t getting me with that one, Psy.”
It was my turn to laugh, because she was right. “Nah but he's cool. He got a practice game tomorrow.”
“Send me clips please. I miss seeing him play. Shit, I miss being there. I didn’t expect to be here this long.” She sighed.
“How is your grandmother doing anyway?”
“Getting on my last fucking nerve. I’ve been trying to talk her into coming back that way, but she isn’t going. It’s not clicking to her that I paused my whole fucking life to come here, not to mention I ain’t seen my child in months. This is the longest I’ve been away from him.”
“I hear you, but yeen missing shit.”
“So you say, but my life is there, not here with old motherfuckers in physical therapy.”
I laughed. “Leave Grams alone. She's gonna be putting your ass out soon enough, just watch.”
“Hopefully very soon because I’m tired of her ass. Speaking of, where is my son’s fine ass stepmama at? I saw her the other night when I was on the phone with Junior and had to double take.”
“You boutta get your ass hung up on.” I shook my head.
She went into a fit of laughter. “I’m just asking. If you can’t treat her right I ca—” I hung up on her goofy ass.