Hood (9 page)

Moo tried to smile at her but he was too weak to even open his eyes.

“I’m scared, Lamont,” Egypt whispered, her own eyes wide. She didn’t want to say it out loud, but there was a reason she had stopped in the doorway and just stood there instead of coming in. Moo had looked dead laying there like that. She’d thought he
was
dead.

“Fat Daddy said he’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

“Mont, I don’t think we can’t wait for Daddy to get back. I think Moo needs to get to a hospital right now.”

Seeing the tears forming in her eyes, Hood agreed.

Egypt ran and told Uncle Chop to call an ambulance. But them muthafuckas hated coming in the hood without a police escort, and after what seemed like forever and a day they still hadn’t shown up.

Dreko and Egypt paced while they waited, sticking their heads out the door and looking up and down the street for the flashing lights of a phantom ambulance.

Hood sat on the couch holding his little brother in his arms, talking to him softly as he rocked back and forth and counted each second that went by.

“Oh shit,” Dreko said suddenly. He had been watching Moo closely and now he put his hand on Hood’s shoulder, stilling him. “Man, hold still. Quit rocking him. Shit.” He stared at Moo for several long seconds. The boy’s chest only moved every so often and it didn’t seem like he was taking in no air at all. “He ain’t even breathing, yo. I think he dying, man.”

At that, Hood jumped up and hoisted Moo and the blanket over his shoulder. “Get out the way!” he said, running. He was through the shop and out the front door before he could be stopped, and he had carried Moo halfway down the block before Dreko and Egypt caught up with him.

“Man what you doing?” Dreko blurted, jogging beside his boy.

Hood kept moving fast as he headed toward the hospital with his sick brother in his arms.

“Hold up,” Dreko said, taking long strides until he was jogging in front of them. Hood could prolly get Moo to the emergency room all right, but Dreko was bigger and he was stronger. He could get him there faster. He lifted Moo off his brother’s shoulder and cradled him. Then both boys took off running through the streets of Brownsville, rushing little Monroe toward the nearest city hospital.

Life just ain’t worth it at all without you…

I don’t wanna do it at all without you…

“IT DON’T MATTER
how much this shit cost,” Hood bargained with the old white nurse at the desk. Moo was so sick they had put an oxygen mask over his face and taken him to intensive care where the doctors were now working on him. “I got plenty of cash so everybody gone get paid, cool? Just tell them doctors to do everything they gotta do ’cause I’m straight. Don’t worry ’bout how much it’s gone cost or none of that stupid shit ’cause I been stackin my shit. Just let my brother be okay, cool? Go in the back and tell all of them I said to take care of my little brother for me, aiight?”

The nurse looked sympathetic and assured him the doctors would do their best.

Hood and Dreko both walked the hall nervously. Hood kept his eyes on the checkered floor as he tried to remember how to pray. His mother had taught him a long time ago, but none of the words would come to him now and his heart was beating so fast it made his mouth dry. Panic had his mind going cloudy, and the only thing he could do was spit himself a mental rap to keep his thoughts sharp and his fear at bay.

My lil brother in this ’spital,

I feel like clutchin’ on my pistol

Black Glock! The military issue!

Chest full of stress, what better way to get it off

One by one, I gotta pick these feelings off!

Uncle Chop and Egypt had somehow managed to flag down a cab and were now waiting with them. Somebody musta called Sackie ’cause him and his sister Zena were there too. Every few seconds Hood came out of his zone and looked toward the door real quick, hoping that a miracle would transpire and his moms would come walking in. He wasn’t supposed to be doing no life-or-death shit like this by himself. Moo was his little brother, not his son. Something inside Marjay’s heart shoulda pulled her here straight off the streets. Her mother-instincts should have told her that her baby was real sick and needed her bad. They should have sent her running outta whatever crack house she was holed up in and straight into the emergency room.

But in the end it didn’t matter where Marjay was getting high at, or what mental lyrics Hood spit, or how much bank he had stacked. Money didn’t fix everything, and it sure couldn’t save Monroe.

“We tried,” the doctor said, shrugging as he came through the door. He was a turban-wearing Pakistani in an inner-city hospital besieged with gunshot victims, AIDS patients, and other casualties of the violent crime that encapsulated the cold Brooklyn streets. His eyes were tired but emotionless, and he looked straight through Hood as he spoke. “But the boy is dead. He should have been seen in the hospital weeks ago. The child had one of the worst cases of pneumonia I’ve ever seen. He did not survive.”

Hood stood there in shock. The doctor walked right past him and approached Uncle Chop.

“Are you the grandfather? You’ll need to select a funeral home so the nurse can tell the morgue who will be collecting the body.” And with that he walked off, sighing as he grabbed a chart off the wall so he could attend to his next patient.

The nurses drew the privacy curtains in Moo’s room as Hood shed hot tears over the body of his little brother. Moo looked even smaller in death, especially with all them tubes going in him and the big machines he had been hooked up to. Hood cried. He might have been living a grown man’s life, but in reality he was still just a child. Sniffing, he climbed up on the hospital bed and joined Moo whose tiny body remained warm, and snuggled his little brother in his arms for the last time. He closed his eyes, his tears dampening his brother’s face as he pretended that Monroe was just sleeping and would wake up any minute with big trusting eyes and a long list of crazy questions coming outta his mouth.

It was Fat Daddy who had Moo buried a week later. He had sent a crew out looking for Marjay, but she must have been locked up because nobody had seen her on the streets and she ended up missing the boy’s funeral, just like she had missed almost every other event in his life.

Hood’s heart was crushed. Reem and his mother came by the shop and cried with him. Dreko was there for him too, night and day, and so was Sackie. His boys didn’t crowd him or nothing, but they definitely let him know that their hearts was paining for him and Moo and that they had love for him like a brother. Moo had been their baby boy too.

But something deep inside of Hood seemed to be permanently damaged after Moo’s death, and for the first time Fat Daddy allowed himself to feel for the boy. His grief was strong, almost overwhelming. But there was something else mixed in with it too, and Fat Daddy saw that shit real clear. It was rage. Aimed at life on these streets and at his mother, Marjay, too. Complete rage and utter helplessness. The kind of dangerous emotions that if not countered, can drive a man to commit an act he could wind up in jail for.

Fat Daddy walked up on Hood in the small kitchen behind the shop late one night three days after Moo had been buried. He had eased downstairs and into the back room, lured by a sound that he had never heard before. The boy stood next to the microwave with his back to the door. His head was bent and his small shoulders shook as he cried from his natural soul.

Fat Daddy never said a word. Instead he walked up behind Hood and put his arms around him, comforting him. To his surprise, Hood accepted his touch and didn’t pull away. Fat Daddy wasn’t father-figure material and wasn’t even trying to be. But he was the only man alive who could show Hood any real concern or affection. He held the boy and let him grieve.

Regardless of the distance Fat Daddy had tried to keep between them, from that day forward Hood saw himself as Fat Daddy’s son. As much as it hurt him he’d had no choice but to say good-bye to his little brother, and while searching for a connection to fill up the emptiness left by Moo’s death, Hood rebuilt himself a family out of the people who were there for him in a major way every single day. Egypt became his soul mate and lover, Sackie became his closest confidant, and Dreko became his brother.

I can tell watchin her walk, what she workin with,

Frame-fitted cat suit like Eartha Kitt…

SACKIE HAD A
sister named Zena. She was a blondie who liked to fuck. The two of them had been sent to Brownsville to live with their elderly grandfather when he was four and she was two years old, after their parents were killed in a boating accident. They were two blond-haired, blue-eyed white kids in a tough neighborhood overflowing with brown bodies. Quite often they stood out in a crowd, but they were just kids and Brownsville was the only home the pair had ever known.

Sackie and Zena attended the mostly black and Hispanic schools in their neighborhood, and by the time they were in the third and fifth grades the fact that they were geographical minorities was no longer easy to ignore.

While Sackie was big for his age and had been quick to join up with the dominant click and earn himself a rep as a white boy who had mad fist skills, Zena had always been shy and hesitant and very insecure. Her timid demeanor made her an easy target for the chicks in the hood who felt superior to her, and whose impressions of white people in general were already mostly negative and contemptuous.

But it didn’t take long for Zena to figure out something that the black girls in the hood didn’t like and definitely didn’t care to admit: Zena had a nice plump ass and brothers wanted to fuck her. Yeah, she knew the guys weren’t all up in her face because she was brilliant and popular or anything, because she really wasn’t. She had gotten the looks in the family, while Sackie had gotten most of the brains. But when the black boys crept upstairs to the apartment she shared with her brother and grandfather and closed the door to her bedroom, Zena became the sole focus of their attention and she loved every minute of it.

Zena might have been lonely and love-starved, but she wasn’t street dumb. She didn’t give the pussy up to every dude who wanted it, only to those young ballers who could either provide her with something she wanted in return, or those who could advance her standing in the hood in some kinda way. Lately she’d been fuckin with a trap boy named Roller, who worked for Xanbar up on Sutter Avenue, but there were a couple of guys much closer to home who were clocking her too.

“Don’t let these broke niggas use you,” Egypt had warned her. They were good friends and Zena was trying hard to pay attention and take her advice. Egypt was one of the few black girls in the hood who actually talked to her like she was a real person and wasn’t pressed out about the shit other people talked when they ate lunch together in school or were seen hanging out together in the hood.

“You see that shit?” Egypt had said one afternoon as they walked home at the end of the school day. She grabbed Zena’s arm and pointed her toward the corner where a patrol car was double parked and two officers were patting down a group of young thugs they had hemmed up against a fence. “They might be going to juvie today, but most of them gonna be in somebody’s state prison by the time they turn twenty-one. Ain’t no future in what these idiots is doing, girl. Don’t get all blinded just because one of them brings you some slum earrings or buys you a slice of pizza and Chinese food two nights in a row. That shit ain’t nothing. Fuck around and you’ll be looking like one of them stroller chicks on the porches in the projects. Dummies walking around here fifteen years old and already got three kids. You see ’em pulling, pushing, and kicking all them babies down the street. You’re real pretty, Zena, so be real smart too. You need to hold out for somebody who got a future out in front of him. A cat who’s going somewhere far and wants to take you along too.”

“Somebody like Hood?” Zena asked, although she was secretly thinking of Dreko. Hood’s man had been pushing up on her hard, letting her know how much he wanted some of what she was holding.

Egypt nodded. She’d been Lamont’s woman for a minute now, and she knew him like a book. His flaws, his weaknesses, all of his shortcomings, and yet she still loved everything about him.

“Yeah, somebody just like my Lamont. He might be down with Xanbar’s operation in a major way, but he ain’t stupid. I can’t say I like all the shit the D.W.I.T. boys is out here doing, but if it wasn’t them it would be somebody else. But on the real, though, Lamont gonna be somebody big one day. You just watch,” she said, secretly wishing Lamont would show interest in something other than spittin rap music and making money. “My man is ambitious. He got dreams and big plans. Goals and intentions. Don’t sleep on him baby because one day Mont’s name is gonna be ringing big bells up on all of Brooklyn’s boulevards. He’s gonna be well known in this hood.”

Egypt mighta been speaking the truth when she described the kind of guy Zena should be looking for, but Zena’s lot in life was a whole lot harder than hers. Things just didn’t flow for Zena the way they did for her friend. For one thing, Egypt commanded acceptance on the streets just because of who she was. Fitting in wasn’t a problem for her. She had a paid father, a capo boyfriend, and she looked just like everybody else looked in their hood so she dripped with confidence and never worried about whether or not she was doing or saying the right things.

But Zena’s reality was way different and so was her mind set. Sackie mighta been brilliant with numbers, but Zena’s talents lay in other areas. She liked to floss. To be seen and to be admired. To fit in. She had learned to boost at an early age, and between that grind and Sackie’s hustle, they were pretty good on money and Zena used most of hers to keep herself popping tags and looking good.

While Egypt was running back and forth to dance class and piano recitals and talking non-stop about college and medical school and what she was gonna do as soon as she got out of Brooklyn, Zena’s mind had never been stretched that wide. She’d grown up without a mother figure anywhere within reach. She’d had no one to school her on the ways of womanhood, or to tell her about her period, or even to show her how to take proper care of herself down there, let alone how young girls were supposed to navigate the waters of life to become a success. She was a tentative girl searching for a spotlight. Low on confidence and wanting badly to be a part of something big.

So the first time Dreko stepped to her she was on receive mode. Wide open and delighted that a ruff-riding willie like him was showing her so much attention.

He was real sweet at first too. And real possessive.

“Bring that phat ass over here,” he would laugh and snatch her up in front of all his friends. “Girl you gone need an armed escort, rolling down this block looking that fine! Hey, yo!” he’d warn all the cats on the corner, “This me, ya dig? I know this shit looks good, but don’t get no ideas because all this fluffy angel cake is about to be mine.”

Zena would blush and squeal like she was embarrassed, but the whole time she would be clinging to his strong brown arms, loving the way they felt wrapped around her, and enjoying the spotlight and the way the other guys gazed at her with hunger and envy in their eyes.

To have a cat like Dreko wanting her also gave Zena mad credibility with other bitches and made her legit on the streets. Even some of the chicks who used to flex on her knew better now. Once word got out that white girl Zena was rolling with Big Dreko, it seemed like her whole life changed. No more was she on the outside looking in. She was the shit now, and the D.W.I. T. crew treated her like a queen. Zena basked in that glow, feeling glorious and goddess-like. She hung at the right spots, drank, smoked weed, popped X, and even hit the pipe every now and then. Anything to fit in with the crowd and stay on par with the crew who rolled with her new man.

But Sackie was dead-set against her getting with Dreko from the beginning and he let her know it too. He’d run into them at a party and yanked Zena out of Dreko’s lap and taken her outside to scream on her while Dreko laughed behind them and reached for the next bitch.

“You don’t wanna fuck with him, Zena. I mean it. You might think you know the streets but you don’t. That cat is a fool. A straight-up fool. The only thing he can do for you is bring you down.”

Zena was high and feeling large. “Damn! Every fuckin body has somebody, except me. Don’t you want me to be happy for once?!?”

“Not with Dreko. Ain’t he fuckin with that girl Fatima from Riverdale? You don’t wanna go up against her, Z. She carries a razor and she’s wild as hell.”

Zena put her hands on her hips. Sackie just didn’t know. She had already beat Fatima’s ass into the concrete for wagging her bubble ass around in front of Dreko.

“Nobody tells you who you can be with! You fuck that grimy bitch Tina on our couch almost every night and I never try to stop you. She was the one who got those girls over on Dumont to jump me that time. But I didn’t shit on her name or tell you you couldn’t be with her, did I?”

Sackie glanced around the streets, then shook his head, concern shining in his eyes. “This ain’t the same, Zena. That girl is just a piece of ass. Dreko is something different. He’s off, Z. Mental. No chick is safe around him, if you ask me. Especially a chick like you.”

Zena moved closer to her brother. She put her hand on his arm and pleaded with him. “But I like Dreko. And he’s feeling me too. He treats me right, Sackie. He makes me feel good. He might be wild and crazy out on the streets, but when he’s with me he’s all the way straight. I’m serious.”

“You don’t even know that dude, Zena. Trust me. He leaves shitty footprints wherever he goes. Find somebody else. Sip is in there, right? He’s a cool guy and he’s always liked you. Go back inside and hang out with him tonight.”

“I don’t like Sip.”

“I’m telling you, stay away from Dreko or come home with me, Zena. That’s it. Those are your only choices.”

Zena had gotten pissed off then. Sackie was probably jealous. He’d never approved of none of the guys she liked. It had always been just the two of them against the rest of the world, and while Zena loved her brother from the heart, he wasn’t her damn father and he couldn’t tell her what to do.

“Too late,” she said defiantly. Dreko had already fucked her so good she’d lost all sense of herself. She would have cut some damn body if they tried to come between her and all that good black dick he was laying on her. She backed toward the club entrance, about to dip back inside and leave her brother standing alone on the streets. “Me and Dreko are already together. All the way together. We gonna stay that way too.”

Sackie swallowed hard. He knew what that shit meant and it scared him. He glanced around, then lowered his voice. He didn’t wanna say it, but he had to. “Be careful, Zena. I heard some real foul shit about Dreko back in the day from Miss Newman. I used to go to the store for her all the time, remember? Well she told me something so grimy I never repeated it. Not even to Hood. So watch yourself, you hear? Dreko might have some unnatural tendencies about him, nah’m saying? He’s a hard body soldier right now, but he ain’t always been no straight shooter.”

“You just don’t wanna see me with nobody. Especially nobody who’s riding harder than you.”

Sackie sighed. “Make him wrap it up real tight, Zena. Make him double-bag that shit, ya hear?”

Zena smirked. “You don’t rule me. Just let me do me, okay?”

Sackie’s heart fell. Zena was right when she said it was too late. He could have muscled her down and forced her home, but then what? Lock her up in the crib forever? His sister had never been slick or street savvy, and Sackie knew if she was defying his word, then Dreko already had her by the brain.

Tears of anger and frustration were in his eyes as he turned away from his little sister so she couldn’t see his pain. He started to call out over his shoulder, but then he said fuck it and turned around again. If seeing the hurt on his face would help wake her up, then let her see it.

“You’ve got a hard head and you’re making a mistake, Zena. A big one. That fool is gonna dog you. Fuck up your whole life. He’ll turn you out, then drag you down in the sewer with him and toss you off when you start stinking. You gonna end up just like these other bitches out here who fuck with these crazy ballers. Strung out and on the streets. Just remember, I love you and I tried to warn you.”