Chapter 11 #2
My stomach cramps because I’m crazy enough to think that I know him after spending a few hours with him, but deep in the pit of my crampy stomach I know I’m right.
Out of all the bakeries in the city, he wants a German chocolate cake from Copeland’s bakery that’s two doors down from Terrica’s shop?
I think he wants me back with him again, and there’s something inside of me that wants him back with me too.
She brings her phone close to her eyes. “Hold on. I think he’s typing something else to me. That’s what the dots mean, right?”
I groan, rolling my eyes. “Yeah, girl.”
Her head cocks to the side and her eyebrows wrinkle. “What the heck does this mean?”
I want to pry the phone from her hands and question him myself, but that’d be a pretty trifling thing for me to do.
After a few seconds, Aunt Faye’s mouth curves into a smile. “Ohhh, he’s still helping some of the boys at Worthing. He says he’s teaching them how to throw jabs. Ain’t that nice of him? Lord knows Kenny struggles with them boys. This bunch he got ain’t easy.”
My body grows warm and my eyes dart back to the wet floor. “Why don’t you bring Rich the cake tomorrow?”
“He’s busy all day tomorrow. I don’t like bothering him on Sundays unless it’s important.”
“Because of…?”
When she doesn’t answer, I glance back over at her, and she’s already staring at me with her lips pursed. It’s the same look she gave me when I asked her about his broken jaw.
“Okayyy.” I blow out a raspberry. “Why don’t you bring it to him on Monday?”
“You know Copeland’s is closed on Mondays, and Rich doesn’t like to eat anything on Mondays anyhow.”
“You sure know a lot about his schedule and eating habits.”
“And you sure care a lot about the delivery of this cake. Are you okay?” She crosses her arms, raising her eyebrow.
“Again—I’m making conversation.”
“Again—you’re making conversation about stuff you never cared about before.” She reaches out, placing her hand on my forehead. “You ain’t got a fever, do you?”
“Not funny.” I roll my eyes, pulling away from her touch.
She laughs, shrugging. “I’ll just have to get the cake to him next weekend. He’ll understand. He ain’t all fussy about sentimental stuff like you are.”
“I am not fussy about sentimental stuff.”
“Okay—you just don’t like folks to feel forgotten because you’re anxiously attached or whatever your therapist used to say. I know…I know.”
I roll my eyes. “Please don’t make it sound like I need another grippy sock vacation with DePelchin.”
She pulls her readers from her face and chews on one of the tips. “I wonder if…nah, nevermind. I gotta go back out to Manvel. I can’t be late for the first clean. It’s a biggg house sitting on about thirty acres of land. Can you imagine living on thirty acres?”
“Right…the mysterious Manvel client that lives outside of your fifteen-mile radius.”
“They’re not mysterious. I met them at New Bethel’s Fall Festival, and they’re paying a nice chunk of change for me to clean their place. You know I don’t like turning down good money.”
I snort out a low laugh. “True, but what do you always tell me? All money ain’t good money?”
“Well, this, my Lovebug, is good money. It’s worth the long drive.” She sighs, sitting her readers on the counter. “So what you and Terrica got planned tonight?”
“Me and Terrica?”
“Yeah, it’s Saturday. You know you usually run out of here on Saturdays for her…or AJ. And since you and AJ are…” She hunches her shoulders up. “On a break. I figured you’d be with T tonight.”
I swallow a gulp of the bleach-filled air, looking away from her hard stare. “Yeah, I’m…I’m supposed to meet her so we can go see Meechie’s new apartment.”
“New apartment? What’s she moving for? Hazel told me she just moved a few months ago.”
I shrug, pulling the mop out of the bucket, flopping it onto the floor. “You know Meechie. She can’t sit still.”
That mucky feeling skips up my spine and settles on my back while Rich’s deep voice tickles my ears, teasing me about telling lies just to see him again. I glance at Aunt Faye out of the corner of my eye, smiling at her phone again.
“You know me and T can bring it, right?” I blurt.
She looks up. “Bring what?”
“The cake. I can walk over to Copeland’s from T’s and pick it up, and we can drop it off to him on our way to Meechie’s. You don’t even have to bring me to T’s shop on your way to Manvel. I have money. I can Uber there from here.”
She raises her eyebrow. “You and Terrica?”
“Yeah, she says she knows Rich.”
She eyes me up and down from my busted Nikes to the black headband keeping my curls from my face. “Yeahhh, I don’t know about that. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Her tone is just as loaded as it is when she talks about me and AJ because Terrica’s history with guys from the Bottoms is just as sordid as ours.
I gulp in another deep breath and blurt, “Is it because Rich sells drugs like the other guys you and Uncle Kenny tried to help?”
“Drugs?” Aunt Faye yelps.
It was probably a stupid thing to ask, but AJ always said that I could be a stupid girl sometimes—especially when I was curious about life outside of him.
“Terrica said he got into some stuff with Melo Barnes…and I counted out that wad of money he left for you. Four hundred dollars for a basic cleaning where there wasn’t really much of anything to clean? I even saw him pay off people’s tabs at Lucky’s—five hundred dollars worth.”
She cocks her head back as if my words are daggers flying toward her face.
“Training to be an amateur boxer pays nothing. So where’s all this money coming from?”
She furrows her eyebrows, letting out a loud cackle then huffing out, “Rich ain’t no damn drug dealer, girl.”
“Then what is he?”
Her mouth opens and closes as she rests her hand against the counter, shrugging. “He works.”
“Where at?”
“Just forget about the cake. I really think you should drop this.”
“We’re not sharing scandalous gossip. You said he had a legit job, and I asked, ‘Where.’ I don’t think it’s that serious.” I scoff.
“I promised Kenny I wouldn’t talk to you about this stuff with Rich because if I talk to you about one thing then I’ll have to talk to you about another…”
“Talk to me about what stuff?”
She shakes her head.
“You said yourself that Rich is a respectable man. He’s so respectable that you let me go to his house twice and you want to get him a birthday ca—”
“He fights.”
“Well, yeah, that’s why he’s training with Unc—”
“Down at Lucky’s.”
Rasheeda’s shrill voice bounces around in my head along with Ky’s baby face.
“What do you mean he fights down at Lucky’s?”
She rolls her eyes. “I don’t think I need to spell it out for you.”
“That’s…no,” I stammer out, shaking my head. “They stopped that.”
“It never stopped. Things are just…different now.”
“Different how?”
“Melo Barnes took it from Lucky.”
“So he’s like Rich’s boss now, except he’s not allegedly dealing with drugs…he’s dealing with a fighting ring?”
“I guess you can say that…” She shrugs. “And we don’t always get along with our bosses. So there’s that.”
“But why did the police have a press conference and say it was over back in the day? Why did Lucky almost end up in the feds? How the hell is Melo running for city council?”
“I don’t know, and most of the time it’s better that way. The less you know about what goes on in the Bottoms, the better.”
My mouth grows dry. “But Lucky’s is sanctioned now, right? It’s controlled? It’s not like back in the day where…where sometimes people you know?”
I still can’t say the words even though I see them in my head, so they come out as “you know.” They were just too close to Mama.
Aunt Faye sighs. “Listen, in that life there’s three guaranteed things—violence, sickness, and eventually death either by their own hands or at the hands of somebody else.”
I teeter around with the mop handle in my hand. “So, that’s how he broke his jaw? That’s how Zaire died? In…in…”
“The pit.”
“That’s barbaric.”
“That’s their life.” Aunt Faye lifts the side of her mouth and pushes off the counter before turning around. “Why do you think all those boys showed up on our porch with darkness in their eyes?”
She snorts, grabbing the wet towel I left in the kitchen sink and wringing it out.
“That life is brutal. It’s fast and hard, and this generation is different.
They’re terrified of dying in the pit so they look for any way out of there.
They’re not their daddies or grandaddies.
Most of them just don’t have the heart to keep up with their namesake at Lucky’s. ”
Rich’s face pops into my head as soon as she utters that last sentence, but I can’t picture him at Lucky’s doing those things I heard Uncle Kenny say they do there.
He doesn’t raise his voice; he buys me as many Honey Buns as I want; he even kisses on Ky…
and some nights I think of silly things like what it might feel like if he kissed on me.
I shake my head to get rid of that last thought.
“That barbaric stuff has been paying folks’ bills around here since before you were thought of,” Aunt Faye mutters, staring into Ms. Vera’s lush backyard while wiping out the sink.
“Are you saying you’re okay with what they’re doing down there?”
“What I’m saying is that it’s all some men around here know.”
“Like Rich?”
She casts a cursory glance over her shoulder. “Despite the ignorant things that Kenny says about Rich, Rich is still a man. He still has to feed his family just like every other man around here, and he deserves respect.”
I’ve never heard her speak with so much conviction about any of Uncle Kenny’s projects, but Rich made passion crackle all throughout her voice for some reason.
“So he’s trying to get away from that lifestyle just like Zaire, Legend, and EJ were, right?”
She lets out a sigh so deep that her shoulders droop. “You know Kenny’s dying wish is to mold the next—”
“Heavyweight champion. Yeah…I know.”