The Glamorous Life 2 (11 page)

Protesting, Calliope said, “Can I have a few minutes with my brother before you put them out please?”

“Plenty of time for that, once you are well.” Juanita fluffed the pillows and filled the water cup on the night table all at the same time it seemed. “You need your rest,” she said. Then she fished a bottle of pain medication from her smock pocket.

Calliope’s eyes dotted toward Jean.

Help!

Jean smirked before coming to her rescue.

“
Ahem
.” He cleared his throat after getting Juanita’s attention. He said, “It’s my fault for taking up all the time and she will have a few minutes with her brother.”

He could feel the daggers from Juanita. Jean ignored them. After all he was the one footing the bill. To be precise, he was the one doling out the cash. Knowing that he just spoke of himself as not having the best bedside manners or sincerity, he tried to clean it up. “She only needs a couple of minutes with her brother. I think it will do them good.”

Nurse Juanita’s mouth was tight enough to cut glass, but she compromised. “Five minutes. Then you take medication and get rest.” The hurricane left the room and Jean followed, leaving the siblings alone to talk.

Compton rocked Sean John and a cocky smile. “You look terrible,” he said with the honesty and perspective of a kid brother.

“Well thank you that, that makes me feel better already,” she said sarcastically. “You are no ray of sunshine yourself.”

With the sibling banter exchanged and now out of the way, they got serious. Calliope asked, “Who has been taking care of you?” She knew damn well Mabel wouldn’t step up to the plate in her absence. That would have been like asking the pope to run the Nation of Islam.

If she didn’t know any better, it looked like he poked out his chest. “Been taking care of myself.” Compton dug into his loose-fitting jeans and came out with two palms-full of knots of money. “Doing a’ight too.”

Calliope knew the implications. “When did you start selling drugs?”

The very reason she put herself in harm’s way was because she wanted so much more for her brother than being a dope dealer, like graduating high school, college, and a career … his own family and life pleasures.

Compton sounded too sure of himself when he answered, “Long enough to get my weight up.”

Not accepting the murky response, Calliope asked again. “How long?”

“A few weeks,” he confessed—some of the air removed from his cocky chest this time. The interrogation far from over, she asked, where he got the drugs. Somehow, she felt she already knew the answer, but wanted to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.

Compton tried dodging the question. “Why does it matter where I score from?”

“Is it Jean?”

Tight-lipped.

But not denying the accusation was confirmation enough for Calliope. She let out a deep sigh. “Is he forcing you to sell for him?”

“It’s not like that, sis. Don’t nobody and can’t nobody force me to do nothing. Jean’s like the big brother I never had. He holds me down and gives me advice. He holds me accountable and makes sure I’m good the same as he does for Moo-Moo.”

The truth of the matter was that Jean didn’t want that life for his brother either. However, what was he going to do? He tried to talk the boys out of their decision to trap, but once their minds were set in concrete, he insisted in the best way he knew how. Boys will be boys. He hoped that it would be a phase that he would grow out of.

Killing the vibe, Juanita marched back into the room. “Time’s up, patient needs her rest,” she said in a manner of a drill sergeant.

Locking eyes with her brother, Calliope told him, “Please be careful.”

He kissed her on the forehead and, with a smile about the size of the Biscayne Bay washed over his face, said, “I got this. I got us.”

13

Calliope paced the floor
back and forth, watching the entryway to the door, hoping and praying that everything would fall in place. She couldn’t believe that Compton had gotten himself caught up and wasn’t for sure how things would turn out. Finally she saw Mabel’s lime green outfit making its way through the door. Calliope exhaled before she could thank God that Mabel had finally made it there. “Where the hell is my money?” Mabel came out of her face then extended her hand with her palm up.

Calliope shot her a look and if she was anybody other than her great-grandmother by blood—and that was alleged—she would have cussed her out. But out of respect she didn’t. Instead she took a deep breath, bit her tongue, counted to five, then went into her Gucci purse and handed Mabel the two hundreds and a fifty-dollar bill.

Mabel looked at the three bills as if something was wrong, and in her eyes it was. “Look, lil’ girl, run me my cash. Ain’t nobody got time to be playing with you. It’s too early in the morning for this mess and I’m going to mess around and miss bingo down here with this foolishness here! Didn’t I tell you on day one, when I picked y’all up that this was business? Now, I want the rest of my money.”

Before Calliope was about to blow her top, she counted to herself again and then took more air into her lungs, locked eyes with Mabel, and said, “And you will get the rest of your money as soon as you do what
you
are supposed to do. Now that’s how business work.… You get half now, and half when your task is completed.”

Mabel stared at her for a good thirty seconds and Calliope didn’t break her look either. “All right then,” she said, and sucked her teeth, leaned into Calliope, and said to her in a tone above a whisper, “And I don’t want no shit out of y’all some when it come to my damn money.” She put her hand on her hip and was using the other to point at Calliope to let her know that she was jiving.

Calliope said, “Do what you are supposed to do then, and rest assured, it’s plenty more where that came from. Now maybe you should go to the bathroom and get that lipstick off your teeth.”

Mabel was a tad bit embarrassed that she had her red Revlon lipstick on her teeth. “I will do just that, and see you in court.”

As Calliope made her way into the actual courtroom, the bailiff was beginning the proceeding with, “All rise.”

A gavel jockey, sporting a pair of granny glasses on the tip of his nose, balding head, and gray mustache, wearing a black robe, took the stand as if he were a king among his subjects. The judge milked the moment for everything it was worth.

“You may be seated,” he informed his citizens.

She copped a squat on the row bench, legs crossed at the knees. The guy beside her couldn’t stop eyeballing her or her Seven jeans that were molded to her toned calves and shapely thighs. It had been over six months since her near-death experience and Calliope had recovered unblemished. In fact, her body had filled out more. At seventeen, legally she was still jailbait, but dangerously drop-dead gorgeous.

To the thirsty creep sitting next to her, she said, “Stop fish bowling me before something accidently gets stuck in your eye.”

“Don’t flaunt it, if you don’t want it.”

“Perve,” followed by a slender middle finger and she was done with him.

Two cases went by before she shuffled Compton out. “Your Honor.”

The prosecutor stood. “Mr. Conley, you were apprehended with five hundred and twelve baggies of crack cocaine, totaling the weight 100.6 grams. Along with one thousand dollars in cash.”

This was the first time that Calliope had heard the actual accusations. The prosecutor, in her mind, was making Compton to be Nino Brown, Jr., of the South. Meanwhile in her peripheral vision, she glimpsed a familiar face among the people in the gallery. When she turned to be sure that it belonged to the person she thought it did, he winked.

Jean. Why the fuck was he here?
It was all coming together. It was his fault that Compton was selling drugs in the first place anyway. Calliope’s thoughts were interrupted when the judge asked, “Do you have anyone representing you, son?”

Calliope was about to stand, but a dapper, middle-aged man from the front row beat her to the punch.

“Yes, sir, Michael Weikenstein, and I’m Mr. Conley’s attorney.”

His appearance alone played a major part. The suit the lawyer wore was so expensive, it seemed that one would have to be either famous or a major drug kingpin to even afford his retainer.

The judge tried to disguise his surprise. “I see.”

What broke out was a good old fashioned prison-yard knife fight but in a courtroom. In place of hardened convicts were two fork-tongued rival Ivy League litigators. The prosecutor had drawn first blood. Now it was time for the defense.

“First of all, Your Honor, my client is only thirteen.”

“He will be fourteen in less than thirty days, Your Honor,” the prosecutor interjected.

“We are not talking about thirty days, Your Honor, we are talking about today, right now at this minute.”

“You have a valid point, Mr. Weikenstein.”

“As I was saying before interrupted, my client is only thirteen years old and prefers to be called by his first name Compton. Mr. Conley is Compton’s father, a man he hasn’t seen since he was four but that’s neither here nor there. I’m here to discuss the merit of the charges.” The judge’s gleaming head bopped up and down. “That’s why we are here,” the Jewish Ivy League defense lawyer said. “Yes, five hundred and twelve baggies of coke, totaling one hundred point six grams in weight was found. But not on my client. The coke was found in a drainpipe in the Pork and Beans Projects. My client lives with his great-grandma in Miami Lakes.”

The prosecutor didn’t take the potentially fatal blows sitting down. “Then what’s he doing hanging out less than twenty feet away from the drugs in Pork and Beans Housing Projects then?”

As if he’d been waiting for the outburst, Compton’s well-paid attorney said, “Visiting a friend. No crime in that. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have friends who only live in the suburbs.”

Snickering in the gallery.

“And the money,” the defense attorney continued as if the explanation was simple, “a gift from his great-grandmother. To go school shopping, if I may add, and get a couple of money orders for her various bills.”

“How convenient,” the prosecutor snorted. “I’m sure he had a reason for running from the police also.”

Weikenstein flashed a set of gleaming white teeth as if he predicted that he’d be asked. “I do,” he said. “He was afraid. The police in question were undercover, wearing plain clothes. My client had no way of knowing who was chasing him. The painful truth is that Pork and Beans Projects is a dangerous place at times, people sometimes run to stay alive. May I add, not being from around those parts can be even harder.”

He’s good,
Calliope thought to herself. She wanted to stand and clap for the lawyer’s performance, his final blow a coup de grâce.

“Well,” the judge decided, “if the great-grandmother can vouch for the money, your client can be released to your custody. If not, it’s the home.”

Where the fuck is Mabel? Calliope wondered anxiously. She had been so caught up in Mr. Weikenstein’s performance that she had not noticed that Mabel hadn’t entered into the courtroom. Calliope knew good and well that Mabel had better not have left and been at bingo jacking off the money.

“Is there a funeral going in dis here place or something? So damn quiet.” Mabel made a grand entrance into the courtroom, making the judge do a double take at her lime top, and the lime beret she had cocked to the side with a rhinestone broach in the middle of it.

The judge slammed the gavel, ordering silence in the court. “That’s what I’m talking about,” said Mabel. “Nothing like a bit damn little order. That’s how I run my house, with order, sir.”

The judge seemed flabbergasted, and confused. “Who are you, ma’am? And how may I help you?” Then he looked for the bailiff for help. She shrugged the bailiff off her.

Mabel put her hands on her hips. “I am Mabel Moon and I’m the great-grandmother of that there boy that you got all shackled up like he’s some kind of criminal. It just doesn’t make any kinds of sense how you people try to criminalize these kids at such a young age. Talking about y’all some want them to be multi-cultural and getting along with chill-ings from all walks of life and when they venture to the other side of town, you locks ’em up.”

“Miss,” he interjected. The judge pushed his granny glasses farther up his long nose. “You are the great-grandmother?”

“I just said that I was, didn’t I? But I prefer to be called Two Gs Mabel.” Big pockets of laughter came from the gallery.

“One question, uh, Mabel. Your great-grandson had a thousand dollars on his person,” the judge stated. “Do you by any chance know where he came by that much money?”

If Mabel answered the question incorrectly, everything that the lawyer had achieved would have been out of the window. The room became devoid of oxygen as the entire courtroom waited for the answer.

Mabel asked incredulously, “A thousand dollars? Did you just say that that boy had a thousand dollars on him?”

The judge became impatient. “Yes, Ms. Moon, I did. Do you know where he could have come by so much money?”

“All I know is,” Mabel said indignantly, “is that one of yo cricked-ass po-pos must of stole some of it and that just doesn’t make any senses either. Judge, I’m expecting you to make them accountable. Because I gave that boy fifteen hundred before he left home, clothes these days are expensive as I don’t know what. Can’t get nearly nothing anymore, then the gas bill, light bills, I mean Power and Lights, someone need to do something about that. I try to pay on time; my feet bad and I can’t stand in those lines because my two dogs hurt me so bad. That’s why I’m Two Gs Mabel, you heard me?”

Pandemonium broke out. People couldn’t stop laughing, the bailiffs cracking up themselves.

“Order in the court.” The judge wanted the laughter to come to a halt, but was trying to hold his own in.

Then the prosecutor spoke up, “Now what about the curfew charge because he was out after one in the morning.”

Before Mr. Weikenstein could get his two cents in, the judge ruled. “Mr. Conley will be released to Ms. Two Gs Mabel Moon and an ankle bracelet will be placed on his ankle until his fifteenth birthday to ensure that he will be in the house every day before dark, unless with his great-grandmother.”