“
Don't make promises you don't intend to keep. You can't even manage to keep your mind clear enough to think right. Look at you, you stay high on that weed stuff, twenty-four/seven; you swore up and down when you graduated a year ago that you were either going to the military, or you would enroll in barber college. You have done neither. Instead, you come in every night with large amounts of money you made off of selling that crack cocaine garbage. You try spoiling Mike-Mike with that drug money by buying him things. But I work hard every day to ensure that we have something—”
“
Something like what, Momma? A government apartment to stay in?” Derrick said, cutting her off. “I'm sick and tired of the hood. All I've ever known is the hood. That's all my little brother knows as well. If we continue staying here, both me and my brother will do nothing but eventually become products of our environment. Yes, I was gonna go in the military, but since President Bush took office, the majority of the young males entering the military get deployed to Iraq, and are coming home in body bags. So I had to rethink going into the military. Barber school, well, I still might pursue that.”
“
I can't tell.”
“
You can't tell, Momma, because you're too busy pointing out the wrong that I do, without first seeing what it is I'm trying to accomplish.”
Derrick was sick and tired of what living in the hood reminded him of, as well as how it made him feel on a constant basis. Living in the hood reminded him daily that he, his mother, and his little brother, Mike-Mike were poor. As a result of their poverty, they had to be assisted by a government in which Derrick believed had never had poor people's best interest at heart. Especially poor black people. As far as Derrick was concerned, the government, through its welfare program, caused many single mothers to sit around idle and wait for a support check every month. And even though Derrick's mother worked, she had to do so undercover, without the government knowing about it, because if she made more money on her job than the government allowed, the government would terminate her welfare benefits in a hurry. In addition, Derrick hated the fact that while his father was alive, his father was not allowed by the government to stay with them at their apartment, as long as his mother was being assisted by welfare. That, Derrick believed, affected their family’s stability. He felt that instead of the government disallowing his father to stay with them, the government should have promoted it for the purpose of their family staying together.
His father was sick with a chronic drug addiction. Heroin was his father's drug of choice, only because his father was unable to cope with some tragedies he witnessed while serving in the United States Marines. His father suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. After his failed attempt at receiving veteran benefits, his heroin use increased. Living in the hood reminded young Derrick of all of this, and more. All he wanted was just to get the hell up out of such. If not for his sake, for his little brother and their mother’s. If only he could get his mother to understand this.
“
Listen here, young man, I don't care what you are trying to accomplish,” Derrick's mother, getting directly up in his face. “You are my child, and I refuse to see you on the damn six o'clock news somewhere. Look at what happened to your father.”
“
Momma, you don't have to keep reminding me about what happened to my daddy. I know he was found in an alley with a needle in his arm. Besides, I'm not on drugs.”
“
You think you have to be on drugs to be a victim of what drugs can do, Derrick? If so, then who's being naive?”
Derrick sucked his teeth, placed his brown paper bag full of ready-to-sell cocaine underneath his armpit and was about to leave.
“
Don't you walk away from me when I'm talking to you, Derrick,” his mother shouted. Derrick had tears in his eyes. He hated to be reminded of his father's absence. Even though he was only an eight-year-old kid when his father died, he still remembered his father sitting him on his lap, telling him that he loved him and kissing him on his forehead, which always made him feel good.
“
Momma, I'm just doing what I gotta do to help us get out the hood. Why can’t you just accept that?”
“’
Cause you still a kid, that's why.”
“
Momma, I'm almost nineteen.”
“
I wouldn't care if you were almost a hundred. You'll never be older than me. Now, I apologize for reminding you of your father. But listen here, those streets and those drugs will take you under. I see it all the time. Every day on the news some mother is crying because her child has gotten shot down either from gang violence, or from just being a part of the drug game. Do you know what it means to a mother to lose a child? I think not because you're not one.”
“
But Momma—”
“
No, don't ‘but Momma’ me! That drug game, boy, is nothing but one gigantic mirage that's full of illusions. It all leads down the same path, a one-way street to destruction with no fork in the road.”
Derrick sighed.
Here she go with the preachin' again
, he thought to himself.
“
You right, Momma.”
“
No, I don't need you to affirm whether I'm right or wrong. I need for you to clean your act up, and not bring that garbage back into our house.”
“
You mean this government apartment?”
“
Whatever. You ought to be thankful you got a roof over your head. Some people ain’t got that. If you had it your way; you, me and Mike-Mike would be sleeping out in the streets.”
“
We would be sleepin' out in the streets? Why would you say that when I'm doing everything in my power to help get us into our own home, Momma?”
“
You doing everything, but the right thing. ‘Cause like I said, if those Housing Authority folks were to do an unexpected inspection here, ain’t no tellin' what they would find
illegal
of yours. Those drugs in that paper bag underneath your arm, anybody could have spotted it in our living room. But you stay so high off of that weed you constantly smoke, that you don't even know where you be placing that stuff. All I'm telling you is, don't bring that stuff back in here. Derrick, I mean that! Now get it out of here!”
Derrick's mother was a strict no-nonsense woman. She wanted the best for both of her sons. But raising two boys wasn't easy at all. She was a forty-seven-year-old, high-school dropout whose only income was a once-a-month government check and the pay she received weekly from working for an elderly retired doctor as a housekeeper. Every dime she earned went toward purchasing food, clothing, paying her car off and other little things necessary for her, Mike-Mike and Derrick. Derrick often refused to let her buy him anything. After he started hustling coke, he insisted on purchasing things for her and Mike-Mike. The few times Derrick tried giving his mother large amounts of cash, she refused to accept it. She told him she didn’t accept dirty money.
“
There is no such thing as dirty money,” Derrick always responded. But in his mother's eyes, money earned the illegal way was money she didn't want to spend, let alone have in her possession. “Well, Momma, the money you make without the government knowing about it, what kind of money is that? Is it legal, or illegal?” Derrick once asked his mother.
“
It's money I earn the honest way. I just don't report it because the government will raise my rent.” Derrick knew the government would indeed raise his mother's rent if she reported that she was working and the job was paying her pretty nicely.
Still Derrick laughed hard at her reply and said, “Momma, you got game.”
“
Whateva.”
2
I DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT FAT JEROME
Derrick left his mother's apartment, jumped into his ride and hit the highway.
He did so with the express intent of never bringing cocaine into his mother's place again. He knew she would verbally spank his ass for
his carelessness of leaving his money-making product out as he did. For that, he felt somewhat ashamed. He pulled up at his girlfriend Veronda's crib. He exited his car with his brown paper bag underneath his armpit. He hit the doorbell and after waiting a minute or two, Veronda answered.
“
Hey, baby. I didn't know you were coming over,” she said, standing before him in her white T and tight booty shorts.
“
Neither did I, this early,” he responded, sidestepping her to enter into her living room. Usually he would greet her with a kiss, but his mother checking him for slipping had him a little discombobulated.
“
My mom’s fuckin’ trippin’,” he continued.
“’
Bout what?”
“’
Bout this.” Derrick tossed her the brown paperbag.
Veronda caught it and took a peek inside. “Hell, no wonder, boo. You know damn well your mom don't play with you selling drugs.”
“
I fucked up and left the shit laying out on the sofa in her living room.”
“
That's even worse. I know that lil pretty mother of yours pitched a fit.”
“
She did everything, but shoot my ass.”
“
Shit, if she had a gun I'm sure she would've,” replied Veronda, laughing.
“
Threatened to knock my teeth down my throat and everything.”
“
You gon' run your mother crazy, Derrick, I swear.”
“
Not on purpose, Veronda. Look, all I'm trying to do is fuckin’ get us out the damn hood.”
“
You will eventually, baby. Rome wasn't built in a night. Neither were the Egyptian pyramids.”
“
I know that.”
“
Slow down then,” she said, caressing his face with her hand.
“
I can't fuckin’ move at a snail’s pace on this one. It's now or never. ’Cause the hood I stay in ain’t got nothing but a bunch of fuckin’ drug dealers, robbers and pimps in there. Everyday my little brother walks home from school and he has to witness this shit. I know, because I had to witness it, too, when I was his age. Now, look at what I've become, a damn drug dealer. Someone I said I would never become. Now ain’t that a bitch?”
“
Life's a bitch, depending on how you dress her. Like I said, baby boy, in time you will have what it is you seek. That is, if you don't get careless and start moving too fast.”
“
I'm just tired of this hood bullshit.”
“
I can dig it, Derrick. Besides where the hell you think I'm from? I'm just saying take it slow.”
“
Speaking of the hood, though. You ever wonder why they never call the projects a neighborhood? You know, like rich people stay in a neighborhood. But the poor, the hood.”
“
I've never really given it any thought,” replied Veronda. “Why you think it's like that?”
“
I think it's like that, because poor people, particularly black poor people, we always getting the ‘ass end’ of every damn thing! They remove neighbor and give us hood. A fuckin’ hood is defined as something that goes over one’s head. This shit is a trip.”
“
Boy, you too much. You always thinking and coming up with something.”
“
Naw, I'm just keeping it real, Veronda. I'm just keepin’ it fuckin’ real.”
“
You definitely got a point, though. But peep this. You know you also got your hands full with this Fat Jerome thang, right?”
“
Veronda, for real-for real, I don't give a fuck about Fat Jerome, or the lil niggas that work for that muthafuckah!”
“
I know but—”
“
But what? Shit, ain’t nothing to discuss about that fat muthafuckah. After what you told me he did to you, I had a right to take his coke. The pig’s lucky I didn't take his life.”
“
Boo, don't talk like that.”
“
What, you getting soft on me, Veronda?”
“
No.”
“
That fat nigga took you over to his place, got you pissy drunk and when you awoke you discovered that the fat bitch had sodomized you. I understand you didn't want to break the G-code of the streets, but for real-for real you should have went and took out a warrant on his ass.”
“
He would have only gotten out, then my life really would have been in danger. See, Derrick, I’ve been knowing Fat for a while. I know what he is capable of doing. Well, not him, but the lil goons that run with him. Especially Rasco and Tye-Tye. They'll do anything for him, no bullshit.”
“
Them niggas aren't the only ones that'll hurt something,” Derrick shot back.