The Coldest Winter Ever (17 page)

“So is your mother or your father Sterling’s mother’s sister or brother?”

“What is this, a goddamn interview?” I said, losing my cool.

She scooted over to Sterling’s side. “Sterling, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to aggravate your cousin. It was just small talk.” Then she turned to me. “I’m sorry. I just thought it was nice that your parents trusted Sterling to baby-sit. Your families must be really close. I’m telling you, I missed him so much for the past couple of weeks, I thought I would die. I will say, I was jealous at first, you know when Sterling told me you were coming over for two whole weeks. Jealous of
you getting all of his time and attention. I can see that he was right. You
are
just a kid. He was just helping out and everything worked out perfectly.

“Come on, I’ll walk downstairs with you guys.”

She walked over to the closet, grabbed my jacket, and said, “This is yours, right? I left it out when I was packing your belongings. I thought it might get cooler at night. Here, don’t forget it.”

We went downstairs, dead silent in the elevator. In the lobby, Sterling handed me an envelope.

“Call me and let me know you got home safe.” I grabbed what I knew was some small sum of money, sucked my teeth, and walked away with his suitcase and everything I owned inside. I don’t know why I didn’t go off, I don’t know. I just didn’t have anything left inside to go off with. The whole thing was so unexpected.

If I would’ve beat up the girl what would’ve happened? If anybody was predictable it was Sterling. But not this time. Sterling couldn’t control me, so he picked this motherly girl to fill my shoes. She’s probably been around him for years hoping and praying for an engagement ring, but if you asked me it wouldn’t last. It was obvious her pussy is no good, otherwise he wouldn’t have lied to her to be with me in the first place.

At the train station, I broke down and called Natalie. There was only one place to go, a place I used to love—Brooklyn. When Natalie answered, she was all hyped up and happy to hear from me. “Where you been, girl? We all waiting to see you! Where you been hiding at? Why you treating us like we ain’t family? What took you so long to call?” For about three seconds I felt bad for not calling her. Maybe it was really all good in Brooklyn. Maybe I had been bugging out, making things worse than they really were. I told her I was on my way to my Aunt B’s apartment. I would be there around ten o’clock that night. “Good. Let’s hang out. Meet at my apartment at eleven. We’ll go to the club.”

“Why didn’t you call first?” That’s all Aunt B had to say when she opened the apartment door. I was thrown off ’cause Midnight, Momma, and Santiaga made it seem like Aunt B was gonna be happy to see me or something. She had an aggravated look on her face. She pointed for me to go straight to my cousin Bianca’s bedroom. Yelling down the hallway, she reminded me to use the bed on the left side of
the room. “Remember to leave Bianca’s stuff just like she left it, ’cause she don’t like nobody fooling with her stuff.” As I passed the small kitchen to get to the bedroom, I saw a long set of male legs inside. There’s the problem, she has company, a man-friend, and I busted up her groove. I could dig it. I put my suitcase down, went in the bathroom, freshened up, and headed to Natalie’s.

When I banged on Natalie’s door, my girl Simone answered with a big-ass smile on her face and a little pregnant belly. My girl Toshi screamed out, “Surprise, bitch.” All my girls were there—Asia, Zakia, Natalie, with Hennessy and passion Alizé in hand and Ls laying on the table just like old times. I felt real good. In a few minutes I was sure I was gonna feel even better.

I thought as I sparked up my second joint, this is what made life worth living, good friends, free weed, and lots of laughs. Simone filled me in on the oohs and aahs of pregnancy. “Not as bad as people tried to make it sound,” she said. Her and Little Biz broke up. “No real bitch need a nigga to survive anymore. Plus the next nigga’s bound to be coming around the corner any day.” I told her I heard it wasn’t cool to drink liquor when you were pregnant. “As fucked up as the world is today, the baby will need some Thug passion just to be able to roll with the punches.” We cracked up. Simone couldn’t take it no more and laughed so hard she accidentally pissed on herself. I laughed until my stomach ached while Natalie sprayed enough air freshener in the living room to choke us all.

Zakia, Monique, Reese, and Toshi had a game of Spades going. I checked Toshi cheating as usual. She had them tricks down pat. She’d have you talking about the juiciest shit while her hands were switching shit around. Meanwhile she would use those eyes to signal to her partner. She even had coded songs to sing that Reese understood ’cause she was always her partner in Spades. For what she had going they should have been getting paid or in Vegas or Atlantic City with the big-timers.

Fun didn’t break up until about five o’clock in the morning. Natalie’s mom came home. I could see that she had her own high going on, but something about her being in the apartment just changed the mood. One by one, people started breaking out. I nudged Simone, who was passed out on the couch. “Come on, girl, let’s walk over to our building together.”

“Good looking out,” Simone muttered.

Outside night glided into early morning. Blue-gray skies framed what was the quietest time in the projects. At six-fifteen the sun snuck up and mugged the moon. Partygoers were inside their apartments passed out in their clothes. There was nobody outside except the crazy-ass crackheads. I was surprised to see my mother in the lobby of my aunt’s building, bald-headed and thinner than I last saw her. She smiled when she saw me, laughed for no reason at all, and started explaining that she heard I was here in the neighborhood. She was just out checking on me. She knew how Aunt B could be sometime. I could tell she had her buzz on too. I didn’t believe for one minute that she was down in the lobby checking on me at this time in the damn morning. I rode the elevator with her and Simone. Simone got off on the third floor, me on the fifth. As the elevator door was closing, Momma was huddled in the corner rubbing her arms like she was freezing. As the doors closed on her bizarre face, she was saying something like, “You look good, Winter.” I was glad that door shut so fast ’cause I definitely could not return the compliment.

I woke up that afternoon to Aunt B wanting a loan. Since I wasn’t crazy, and Aunt B’s husband was locked up with my father, I knew that if I gave her any money I’d never get it back. If I gave her money today, she’d start to expect it from me. Eventually she would start to demand it from me. After a while she might even try to collect rent for the bed and six feet of space on my side of the room. She was flat broke like all of my aunts are now. Their
houses
didn’t get raided and ransacked
like ours,
though. Their belongings didn’t get repossessed and seized only to be auctioned off somewhere for pennies. They still had clothes, jewelry, stereo equipment, and all that good shit.

“Nah,” I replied.

“C’mon girl,” she pushed. “Just lend me a twenty spot. I’m expecting some money on this Wednesday. I’ll give it right back.”

“Seriously, though,” I said with a straight face, “I don’t got it. I need a loan myself.” I went over to my Coach bag and emptied my stuff onto the bed. “See. Nothing.” I didn’t keep my money in my bag ’cause that’s what people expect. I left it pinned to my bra, a trick my mother once showed me a long time ago.

Aunt B sucked her teeth, “Alright,” then disappeared from the room. She’s stupid, I thought to myself. She should’ve got some loot from that long-legged nigga she had in the kitchen last night. Pussy should never be free.

Simone called asking if I wanted to go shopping. “There’s a big concert tonight and we should both get outfits and go find us some cuties.” I agreed.

In the stores, my blood was rushing at all the new clothes. New styles seem to come in everyday and the stuff I bought weeks, even days ago didn’t excite me anymore. I teased Simone about looking for an outfit that would hide her pregnant belly. She denied it, saying men loved pregnant pussy and if she wanted to she’d sport a halter top and let her belly hang out! We laughed as we imagined how crazy that would look. Meanwhile Simone picked out a whole bunch of outfits.

“Damn, I gotta pee again.” This was like Simone’s third time peeing in one hour. Not to mention she stopped at McDonald’s to use the bathroom on the way here. Meanwhile, I found the perfect outfit with shoes to match. It killed me to pay the grand total of five hundred dollars, although it was a savings from my usual sprees. Simone finally came out the bathroom. The cashier handed me my change. “How much,” Simone asked as if she was financing me.

“No big deal,” I said as if I had a Swiss bank account or something. “You wanna check Nordstrom’s? They usually have all the flavor designer shit. They even got a fat lady department,” I kidded her.

“Nah, I got everything I need,” Simone said. “Just chill.”

At Simone’s apartment, everything became clear. In her big Coach bag, Simone had every outfit she’d picked up and admired at the store. She even had one of those machines that removes the metal alarms from the clothes. She also had accessories, belts, costume jewelry. She had shit I didn’t even see her pick up. In her closet, she had more shit, some with the tags still on ’em. She had two and three of the same items in different sizes. Straight up, Simone was a professional booster. The pregnancy, she said, has increased her take. She made more money now ’cause she could walk out with more layers of clothes on her body and not look suspicious. “You look shocked,” she said.

“Nah. I’m not shocked. I’m mad as hell that you stood there and let me drop five hundred bills when I could’ve got all my shit for free.”

Simone exhaled. “Yeah, you was always paid like dat Winter. Don’t worry, you can take that shit back and I’ll pick it up for you later.”

“I’m wearing this outfit tonight.”

“We’ll just return it Monday. We can do that but you gotta watch it. They’ll ask to see your ID and if your name pops up on the
computer as returning too much shit, next thing you know they’ll be knocking at your door with a badge. You gotta watch these stores, they be updating their tricks everyday. I’m on top of it, though. I know all the tricks.”

“How many tickets you got to the show?”

“Four,” Simone said. “It was supposed to be me, Natalie, Toshi, and Zakia. But Natalie’s going with Will. So you can have her ticket.”

“Who’s Will?” I asked.

“This nigga from Fort Greene. He’s a player. He got a custom-made yellow Land Rover, rimmed out. You should see it, it’s phat. Natalie gon be acting up. Nobody gonna be able to say shit to her tonight. That nigga bought the whole box seat section for the show. He began lacing her lovely with all the butters every since they hooked up.”

How the fuck was we getting to the show? I wondered to myself. Am
I
supposed to take a train, or walk, or hop out a yellow cab while Natalie was styling in a Rover?

Uh-uh. There had to be a better way. “You got a phone book Simone?”

“What?”

“A Yellow Pages. Let’s rent a limo.”

“Alright, let’s do it.”

Brooklyn’s finest, Uptown and the Boogie Down filled the concert hall. As usual, the show outside the theater was the biggest. Females in spring leathers, patent leathers, plastic, lace, cellophane shorts, skirts, the works. Enough gold on necks, arms, and teeth to fill Fort Knox. Players was rocking fresh Nike, Fila, Armani, Versace, Kani, Mecca, and all the flavors. Hip-hop vibes hogged the airwaves and we filed in looking every person up and down and side to side, checking for authenticity. It was a car show, a hair show, a fashion show, and a hoe show all rolled up into one. Each male and female in the audience was as important as any star on the stage.

At showtime, the crowd went wild as the biggest names in hip-hop blew up the stage. The huge speakers blasted out the hottest jams, and the crowd rocked to one rhythm. The MC had the niggas chanting “Make money money” while the ladies overpowered them with our “take money money, take money money!” Natalie was up in the box seats with the kid Will whose hands were holding all kinds of shine— jewels and other signs of big cash flow.

Everything was cool until I saw her standing up, clapping, with a sky blue thirty-five-hundred-dollar Chanel skirt-suit on. This bitch pops out of nowhere with some wears that was strictly my style and overreaching for her. In all the noise, a silence surrounded my head. My body shook with anger at Santiaga and Mom. I also thought of Midnight
leaving me
when that could have easily been us in those box seats, profiling. Now what was I supposed to do while Natalie was pretending to be me? I leaned over close to Simone’s ear, “Do you see Natalie?”

“Yeah, everybody see Natalie up there!”

“That suit she got on is banging,” I painfully admitted.

“The security at the Chanel store is too tight or else
I’d
have that suit on! I told you, that nigga Will is shot out on Nat.” I had only
been living in Long Island for one year. Was shit actually moving so fast that Natalie had become large? “Since when did Natalie become a high roller?” I asked.

“Girl, you don’t know the half. Ever since she made that little video movie with you, she been like a little star around our way.”

“What little movie?”

“Don’t front, Winter. That video with you and Bullet and her and Slick Kid. In one part she was sucking Slick Kid’s dick real nasty-like. Now niggas is sweating her like she Vanessa Del Rio or something.” Natalie waved to us when she spotted us looking up in her direction. She was all excited. She signaled us to meet her afterwards. Simone smiled, nodded yeah, and turned to me, “Yeah, she’s a little bigheaded but she alright.”

The last performers came on, ripping shit down. I moved with the crowd but I was still boiling inside. The MC came on to close the show, then shouted, “A special thanks to Sister Souljah for putting this show together, all proceeds going to her children’s program.” Sister Souljah came out the side of the stage wearing some shit she mixed and matched from the Macy’s clearance rack. People clapped for her. How is this bitch supposed to help the community when she don’t even know how to rock her shit? I checked her arm, no Rolex, not even a Timex, nothing. No weight on her neck, nothing. Her hairdo was phat but that don’t mean nothing when you don’t know how to accessorize. Besides she could use a few sit-ups for her belly. Humph, Midnight got some nerve. I sure wasn’t asking her for shit.