Hittin' the Bricks: An Urban Erotic Tale (4 page)

“He gave you a
package
? I thought you said Saint didn't involve you in none of his drug business. What? You riding for him now?”

India nodded, looking miserable. “I've been riding for about
a month,” she admitted. “Kapp usually makes the Jersey runs ‘cause he didn't have no record. But he got knocked for handing off to a narc. Saint needed somebody to take his place, so he sent me. It was only supposed to be for a minute.”

Eva couldn't believe the bullshit she was hearing.

“Indy! You over here with your father and sister depending on your ass and you let yourself get caught up in some dumb shit like this?”

“I know,” she whispered, and she was really crying now. “I don't know what the fuck he's got planned for me, but I know it ain't good. I heard him talking on the phone before I left early this morning. He's got another drop to make later on tonight so I think I'm cool for right now. But his boys have been riding past the building all night. Tone and Vasquez was calling me out the window earlier, telling me to come downstairs. Them fools was waving gats in the air! I closed the curtains and made Rosa get in the closet. I didn't know what else to do.”

“Call the fuckin’ cops!” Alex demanded. “I'm tired of these drug- slanging bastards! Yo, if Saint is gonna be somewhere making a transaction tonight, why don't you just drop a dime on that niggah and let the narcs take him down?”

India shook her head. “I take him down, and what about his posse? When I lost that dope I lost their money too. You think they just gonna roll over and let me slide with that?”

“You got Rosa in the closet?” Eva asked quietly. She thought about all the days she had spent locked in small spaces when she was younger. Rasheena would leave her alone in the closet so long that she'd be gasping from hunger. She learned to hide a roll of toilet paper underneath all the trash her mother kept in there. When she got real hungry she'd tear off one square at a time and chew it good enough to swallow it. She didn't even
care that it made her stomach hurt and poke out like a starving kid from Africa. At least she was full off something and wouldn't starve.

“Yeah. She's still in there,” India cried. “I didn't know what else to do!”

Eva marched into the apartment's only bedroom and yanked open the door. Poor little Rosa was sitting cross- legged on the floor. Her round eyes were big and scared.

“C'mon, baby” Eva said, reaching out to her and smoothing her braided hair. Rosa was already six and too big to be carried around, but Eva picked her up and balanced her on her hip anyway. Rosa clung to her. She was trembling, and as Eva held the child close she felt moisture seeping into her clothes.

Rosa was wet. The poor little girl had sat there in the closet and peed on herself. Tears came to Eva's eyes. She knew how it felt to be locked up and confined in a closet when you had to go. She used to fight against her bladder for hours. And when she lost, as she usually did, she'd have to piss right there on the floor and then scoot into a corner and try not to sit in it as she inhaled the rank aroma for hours until Rasheena felt like letting her out.

Eva turned to Alex, who loved kids just as much as she did. “Do me a quick favor,” she said, passing Rosa to her. “Take Rosa downstairs and see if my aunt Milena is still up.” Eva's aunt took care of Rosa while India went to school every day, and Eva knew she wouldn't mind getting up to take care of her now. “I think Rosa would probably dig a bubble bath too, Alex.” She turned to Rosa. “You wanna take a bubble bath in my tub, baby girl?”

Rosa nodded with big eyes and a serious face. Eva was glad when Alex kissed the child's cheeks, then cuddled her in her
arms and carried her out the apartment as India double- locked the door behind them.

Eva sat down on India's bed and pulled India down beside her. There was a look of terror and deep shame on her friend's face.

“I fucked up, Eva. I fucked up.”

Eva tried to comfort her. “You made a big mistake, Indy, but it don't have to be a fatal one. You gotta get away from Saint, though. You gotta do whatever it takes to get away from that mothafucka.”

“Eva, you don't really know. It ain't that easy to just bounce like that. Saint owns Harlem. Where I'm gonna go?”

“India, listen to me,” Eva said forcefully. She put her arm around India's shoulder and pulled her close. “It don't matter where you go. Just
go!
Don't you have some friends out in Queens? Jet up outta here and go chill with them for a minute. Saint got too much product flowing in Harlem to worry about following you. Go lay low with your friends for a few. He'll forget about you the minute the next cute chick with long hair and a big ass walks by. For real.”

India didn't look convinced. She just looked miserable.

“What about Rosa? And my father? I got responsibilities, Eva! I can't just run away and leave them here to make it by themselves.”

“Don't worry about your family, India. Your life is on the line. Between me and Aunt Milena, Rosa will be well taken care of. She's downstairs with us all the time as it is anyway. Everybody in my house loves Rosa like she's our own family, so it won't be no problem. And we got your papi covered too. I'll bring him something to eat every day, and I'll get Fiyah to help him take a bath and change his clothes. We can handle this
shit, India. What we can't handle is you sticking around here and then Saint taking you out. Nah, none of us can handle that.”

“Saint put me in an impossible spot. He told me I had to make them fuckin’ runs and I was scared not to! What the fuck was I supposed to do, Eva? It ain't nobody here for Rosa but me and my father, and he's stuck in that damn wheelchair. If Saint takes me out, my father sits there and dies. If he fucks with my sister or my father, then I'll die. You don't know what this shit is like! I'm on my
own,
Eva. You got Fiyah and your aunt to help you. And your moms is right downtown in Brooklyn if you need her. Saint would straight body me if I crossed him,” she cried. “Who the fuck do I got?”

Eva stared hard at India but she didn't have any words for her. Eva had been in Harlem for four years but the memory of Brooklyn still haunted her every single day. Nobody knew what she had been through back in Brownsville except her one trusted friend, Reem Raw. Milena and Fiyah knew Rasheena and Jahden had beaten her, yeah. They knew about the drugs too, and it was Aunt Milena who took Eva to a drug treatment center so she could get clean. She was totally beat down back then, but a big part of her head was still real clear. Eva wanted off the drugs and she was willing to go cold turkey to do that shit, but the people at the clinic wouldn't let her. They said she was too sick and too malnourished. Her iron was real low and her blood count wasn't right. They said kicking cold turkey would probably kill her, so they put her on a quick detox course. Fourteen- year- old Eva was sedated and given the powerful drugs that would get her off of heroin, and by the time she woke up her body's neuroreceptors had been so programmed to reject skag that even if she shot up for the next year she wouldn't have felt the high.

India couldn't even imagine how much of her situation Eva understood. Eva knew how it felt to be alone with nobody to depend on but herself. To be cold on the streets and jonesing for a fix. To have her young body sexually battered by grown men, and to leave the most precious part of herself behind in the midst of all that trauma.

“You just don't know, Eva,” India moaned.

But she was wrong.

“I do so know,” Eva began in a shaky voice. “I know what it's like to feel trapped by a situation,” she said, and then, because Eva really loved India and she wanted her girl to see that it was possible to overcome anything in life if you truly wanted to, she told India about her baby.

I
t was hard going back to that last painful night that she'd spent in Brooklyn, but Eva did it. She told India everything, and she didn't leave none of it out. Not even the parts that she was ashamed of and that made her look bad.

“Me and Fiyah used to steal anything that wasn't nailed down,” Eva admitted miserably. “We didn't have no kinda parental supervision and nobody gave a damn about feeding us neither. Even back then, as young as we was, Fiyah decided he was never gonna have a real job. He was into making music and looking good on the streets, so he was willing to steal in order to finance all that. He swore he was gonna be down with the ballers and the shot
callers who flossed the platinum chains, mixtape CDs, and all the latest gear. But I never cared about that kinda stuff. I went along on all them grimy capers mostly so I could eat, but I got real good at my criminal activities, and by the time Fiyah left Brooklyn and Jahden turned me out, my ass was a pro.

“I used to dip on ballers, get up in the bed with them and wear them out, then sneak out the room with their doe in my pockets while they was sleeping. I was so strung out that it seemed natural for me to be hoeing and sucking dick at the age of thirteen just to get a fix. I would fuck all day and all night to get high. When my pussy got too sore I would give head to playas in the projects for five dollars a pop. I'd let ‘em do me on the dirty stairs, up on the roof, in the back of abandoned cars, wherever … It didn't matter. I learned to do anything I had to do in order to get high, Indy I was only thirteen years old and already I was a ho and a fiend. I hadn't even gotten my first period yet, but I was out there fuckin’ like a grown woman.”

India looked crushed when Eva was done. She was full of sympathy for her friend.

“Eva … I'm so sorry you had to go through all that. Nobody would ever be able to look at you and tell you'd done all that. I can't even imagine you sticking yourself with a needle.”

Eva shrugged. “I had to. Jahden started me off mainlining. Smoking heroin off a piece of foil with a stem didn't really get me high. I needed that direct hit just to feel right.”

“Why the fuck would he wanna get a little girl high off smack?”

“So he could fuck me any way he wanted to. He was a freak, Indy. A funky- nuts fuckin’ freak. He dealt the brown, so he had plenty of it to spare. The first time he shot me up I thought I was gonna die. He caught me in the middle of the night and Rasheena helped him hold me down. He hit me in the neck
and I flipped out. I was terrified. The high was horrible to me. I felt like bugs and shit was crawling all on me and my whole body got dragged down in slow motion. I was in school then, so at first he only did it to me on the weekends if he wanted to fuck me without a fight. After a while he didn't care about me having to go to school. He stopped shooting me in my neck and started injecting me in my groin, and that way nobody could see that I had track marks. By the time Rasheena started getting jealous they didn't have to hold me down no more. I was strung out with a monkey on my back so I just gave the pussy up. Before long my moms didn't want him fuckin’ me for drugs no more so she made me get out on the streets and earn my own money. I would turn tricks half the damn night and bring my money home to Rasheena. Then she'd let Jahden sell me the dope he had gotten me strung out on in the first damn place.”

India shuddered. “Girl please tell me that muthafucka is in jail right now!”

“Nope. His ass is still right there in Brooklyn. With Rasheena.”

“But what about the baby, Eva? You somebody's moms, girl. You got a son!”

Eva smiled slightly. “Yeah, I do. I have a son.”

Then India's face changed. “You ain't just leave him in that laundrymat alone, did you, Eva? Where's your baby at now?”

“I did leave him, but he's doing fine. He's still in Brooklyn. I send him money and go down there and try to see him whenever I can. I was so weak and scared after delivering him that it was hard for me to think straight. I knew the old man who ran the laundry would be there when the sun came up, so I stayed with my baby boy as long as I could. As soon as it got light outside I put him in one of them cloth laundry carts. You know
the ones you use to carry your clothes from the washer over to the dryer?”

India nodded.

“Well I put him in one of those and pushed it right inside the doorway. I took an empty bleach bottle out the garbage and used it to prop the door open, then I walked back up the ramp and sat on a bench to wait for Drunk Mister James.”

“What did he do when he came to work and found the baby there?”

Eva shook her head. “He didn't find him. I don't even know if his drunk ass ever showed up. God musta been watching over me and my baby because a lady named Mrs. Threet got there first. I was in the second grade with one of her foster daughters named Jocelyn, and that little girl used to sit with me at lunch and share all her food. One winter we was in the middle of a bad snowstorm and all I wore to school was a little red pleather jacket with no buttons. Miss Threet was dropping her kids off, and when she saw me she asked where my hat was. I told her I didn't have one and she looked at me like I was crazy. That afternoon she was waiting for me when school let out. She had brought me a long down coat, some gloves, and two hats. She was just nice like that.

“Anyway, I saw Miss Threet pulling two shopping carts full of clothes toward the laundry and Drunk Mister James hadn't showed up yet. Miss Threet took in a lot of foster kids back then, so she would always have two and three shopping carts’ worth of dirty clothes to wash. I can remember when I used to do laundry for me and Rasheena and I was too small to reach the quarter slot on the dryers. There would be all kinds of grown folks sitting right there watching me struggle on my tippy toes, but Miss Threet would always come over with a kind word and help me put my money in. She'd touch my face
and tell me, ‘Smile, baby. Life only hurts until it starts feelin’ good,’ and that's why as soon as I saw her I knew my baby was gonna be all right. Like I said, I believe God sent that lady down to the laundry early that Saturday morning. I stayed long enough to watch her go inside, and when she came right back out again holding my baby in that raggedy towel, I took off running and never looked back. I didn't have to. My baby was with Miss Threet, and that meant he was gone be straight. I felt like God was telling me that this was the right thing for me to do. I got outta Brooklyn right after that. I called my aunt Milena and she told me to sneak under the turnstile and take the train to Harlem, and I been here ever since.”