Chapter 17
Tunan “Tune” Payne
“I’m tellin’ ya. The bitch was stupid-dumb thick, on life, nigga. Hoe was so bad, I damn near emptied my pockets of errthang includin’ the fuckin’ lint.” Shit-talker bragged with a slur in his words as he held up a can of Miller Lite wrapped in a paper bag.
His body had a slight lean to it, and if it wasn’t for the railing on my mama’s porch, his ass would’ve been in the fucking bushes.
“Fuck you know ’bout a thick junt?” Tuden snickered while shaking the dice in his fist.
Shit-talker had come up the street just minutes ago, and the shit-talking and boasting had not stopped since he’d made his way toward my mama’s porch.
“Nephrew, I been fuckin’ dese bitches since way back when. Since Rosa Parks was gettin’ on the fuckin’ bus. Since you was still in yo’ daddy’s nutsack!” He thrust his body forward as he held his beer can to his chest while spit flew from his lips.
“Rosa Parks? How old you is, Unc?” Tulen asked as he exited the house, rubbing his hand down his stomach and bringing the cool air conditioning with him.
He had one more time to use that bathroom, and our mama would be on his ass about her cold air being let out from his back and forth.
Shit-talker took a sip of his beer. I was almost certain it was his fifth or sixth one today, and it was barely three o’clock. “Don’t worrrryyy ’bout how old da fuck I’m is. Just know I’m old enough to been have fucked her.”
“Fucked who? Rosa?” I asked with a lifted brow as I sat up in the seat I’d been slumped in.
Memphis, like every good weather day in the hood, was live. Coming back to M-Town hadn’t been in my plans at all, but I was, ready to hear the shit this damn fool was about to let roll off his tongue.
He snapped at me with a drunken glare. “Dat wut I said, ainnit?”
Shit-talker was sweating profusely, and the alcohol permeating through his pores was almost nauseating. Once my mama was done cooking, he had to eat something deep-fried and drown his throat in water to help get some of that liquor out of his system.
“So, Rosa Parks was your girlfriend? The same Rosa Parks who had to move to the back of the bus?” Tulsaire questioned for all of us.
Nephew had his Nintendo Switch in hand and hadn’t been paying us any attention for the most part.
His curly fade was crisp to perfection since we’d both gone to the barbershop this morning.
With one of his long legs stretched out and resting between the rails and the other tapping against the leg of the chair he was in, he tilted his head as he waited for an answer.
I’d been tasked with flying in and escorting Tulsaire back to Jagoda Bay.
My mama had flown up spontaneously for a weekend—as if she hadn’t been spending enough time with us—and it just so happened that Tulsaire got home the last day she was set to fly out.
Instead of changing her travel plans to spend time with him in Jagoda Bay, she was able to convince my sister to let him fly back to Memphis with her.
Tuscany only agreed because Tuden and Tulen were still hanging around Mama’s house regularly.
They let Mama get her two days with my nephew in Memphis, and now I was here to collect.
It was better that I did it than the head of the Navarro Cartel.
Goal Navarro didn’t play about his baby brother, and neither did we.
We all had his safety at heart and wouldn’t let a curl on his head get out of place.
The sun had shown no mercy to Memphis, and in those two days, Tulsaire’s toast-colored skin had gotten a shade darker.
I was just glad that Nephew had been outside and had taken a break from raising hell on the games.
A little hood shit and Memphis slang were good for him.
Goal must have agreed because he hadn’t badgered my sister about where his baby brother was yet.
“So you callin’ me a lie, you lil’ brown-eyed knucklehead?” He lifted his beer in Tulsaire’s direction.
Tulen, who was now sitting on the rail of the porch and sealing a blunt closed with his lips, spit out a weed bud. “Aye… Dat one gone get yo’ cap blown back, Shit-talker. Pipe down.”
Shit-talker slapped Tulsaire’s shoe, knocking his foot from the railing.
I’d gotten us both the new grey Jordan 5s that had dropped today, bright and early.
Wolf Chase Mall was packed as fuck. I was so overwhelmed by the time I got to the counter to check out that I could only cop us the Nike sets to match.
I had planned to rack up on more shit, but I’d had enough of the bebe kids and wannabe gangsters in the mall.
We were basic as fuck today, but it wasn’t shit going on in the hood but the hot-ass sun, drunk niggas, like the one in front of us, crackheads, and kids playing in the fucking street. We weren’t trying to impress anybody.
“Mane!” he hollered out, almost tipping the can of beer over as he swayed. “Dis lil’ spoiled-ass nigga know what it is. Matta fact, what you do wit dat twenty you got off me da otha day?”
Tulsaire’s smirk remained in place. “Went straight to Dixie Queen with it. Ten-piece hot, all flats, fried hard with a grape slush. It was fye too!” he boasted.
Tulsaire was well taken care of wherever he went.
These ignorant motherfuckers in Memphis fed right into the “Tulsaire trap” and gave him whatever, even without his little gamer ass having to ask.
The little nigga just had it like that. He was beginning to pick up Memphis slang, too, and although he was hardly in the city, that nigga was still born here and had uncles that were Memphis to the core.
His accent was Jagoda Bay heavy, but his lingo was the M through and through.
My nephew was going to be a triple threat when released to the world.
For now, he was still under lock and key.
“Who took you to Dixie Queen?” Tulen asked as he fired up his blunt.
“Uncle Den.”
“Nigga, what?” Tulen snapped at Tuden. “And y’all ain’t bring me shit back?”
Tulen blew out a wad of Kush that I fanned so that it would hit Tulsaire in the face.
I was sure his stepdaddy and brothers smoked around him, but it was too damn hot for him to be catching a contact.
Plus, the little nigga could sing, and I didn’t want him to get the bright idea of smoking, and then boom, there go his vocal cords.
Nope, we couldn’t have that. We smoked enough for him and all those little niggas he liked to stream with.
It was inevitable, and probably too late, but I wanted to keep Tulsaire innocent for as long as I could.
“Bruh, you was out the way. Had I bought you sum’n, shit woulda been cold as fuck. You know if you don’t eat it fresh out the grease, it’s ova with.”
“Unc, yo’ fries were gon’ be too soggy.” Tulsaire snickered as he pressed buttons on the handheld gaming console.
“Facts, ’Phew,” my brother responded, backing him up while blowing smoke in the opposite direction.
It was too fucking hot outside for me to smoke.
As a matter of fact, I needed to lay off the shit.
I nearly committed myself somewhere when I passed the fuck out from Athena reading me a book, and my ass woke up face down in the desert with the Cuppacios.
The shit scared the fuck out of me. It felt like one of those dreams when you went to bed and found yourself feeling like you’d been pushed off the cliff.
I was sore as fuck, too, when I stood from that hot-ass sand, leading me to believe Don may have pushed us out of the fucking plane upon arrival while we were still out cold.
I had asked my sister how the nigga even got access to her home, but she was playing stupid like a motherfucker.
It seemed that Don was like a fucking puppet master and held all the strings on everybody around me.
I was going to have to watch myself and that meant laying off the weed.
I’d gone damn near a year without it; I could do it again.
We were all so enthralled with the drunken antics of Shit-talker that we didn’t see my mother step onto the porch until she was slapping Tulen upside the head.
“Owww! What the—”
“Say it and watch I slap ya again.”
“Ma, what I do?” He held his head while perching the blunt between his lips.
“Out here smokin’ ’round my Goddamn grandbaby! Dat’s what!” Mama snatched the weed from Tulen and tossed it over the side of the railing.
When it landed somewhere in the bushes, Tulen cracked a smile. “Aite, when you set it on fire, I ain’t payin’ fo’ no new landscapin’.”
“Boy, shut up! It rained last night, so the soil and plants are wet. Stop smokin’ in front of him.
He’s watchin’ errthang y’all do.” Our mama then looked up at Shit-talker, who was taking a sip from his beer.
“As a matter of fact, come on in until it’s time for me to take y’all to the airport, baby. ”
She held her hand out, gesturing Tulsaire to come inside.
As soon as he was within arm’s reach, she grabbed him to her chest and kissed all over his face before the door slammed shut.
Tulsaire was getting a version of our mama that none of us had ever gotten.
He was getting the healed her, and she was more loving, caring, mentally sane now that life had turned around financially and she had more security.
Tulsaire also had his brother’s mama as a grandmother figure, and his stepfather’s mama, Dana, as one too.
My siblings and I had never had grandparents.
Our mama’s mama had died long before any of us remembered, and since I hadn’t known my daddy, that side of the family was nonexistent until Shio showed up.
According to him, though, I’d lucked up not meeting them niggas.
Tulen pulled another blunt from his pocket and grinned. “Shit-talker?”
“Wazzup, niccah?” He was staggering so much that he had taken a seat at the end of the porch.