Trickery (10 page)

Even though the day was supposed to be all about empowering young girls and giving them a clear road to follow for their future success, plenty of young boys from Harlem had turned out in droves to take advantage of all the free information and services too.

And me? I was working my ass off! My girl Egypt road the train uptown from Brooklyn, and I kept her busy cutting material and threading needles as I led a bunch of short sessions I called, “From Fabric to Finery in 15 Minutes or Less”.

I had chicks strung out, oohing and aahing as I picked a girl out of the crowd at random, then posted up at my sewing machine and measuring her body dimensions with just my eyeballs, I whipped her up a sexy, banging JuicyOriginal summer dress in less than fifteen minutes. After a few sessions everybody in the joint wanted them a free JuicyOriginal! Those crazy teenagers started lining up real thick at my station and fighting over who was gonna look the best in their gear.

There were entertainers from the music industry in the house too, and one of my old friends showed up and stole the show. My girl Candy Montana used to be the lead singer in a hot female trio called Scandalous! And I got amped when her and her man Knowledge Graham walked in looking like Jay-Z and Bey.

I had known Candy from my old neighborhood, and she had been through the same type of craziness with her man Hurricane Jackson that I had been through with G. Or maybe even worse. Candy was one of those real gorgeous chicks who had such a beautiful voice and a different look about her that no matter where she went she made people stop, stare, and take notice. Me and her were about the same body size, and back in the day whenever I got a chance to sew something hot and slutty that I knew G wouldn’t let me wear, I would send it to Candy and she would style my gear and publicize my JuicyOriginal line.

Today, Candy got up on the stage they had set up in the middle of the basketball court and gave a real good speech that motivated all the young chicks and had them jumping up and down and screaming her name. She started her session out with a little prayer that was dedicated to her baby sister Caramel, and her two best friends from Scandalous! Dominica and Vonzelle.

The prayer was sad and tragic because all three of the people she had dedicated it to had died when a fire broke out at the House of Homicide and everybody in the joint got trapped behind the chained doors. Folks had stampeded like crazy as they tried to get outta the building anyway they could, and the few who didn’t go down from the smoke and the flames ended up getting crushed to death under other people’s feet.

It had been a real miserable time in Harlem when that happened, and for a while the word on the streets was that Candy had lost her mind from all that grief, but time heals everything, and eventually she had come back to being herself, and back to doing the things she loved; singing, dancing, and helping young girls make something out of their lives.

Because Candy’s life had definitely been real fucked up. Everybody knew that Hurricane Jackson had dogged her out and forced her to do a lot of unspeakable shit, and when word got out about the nasty XXX sex tape he had made her star in with his dog, a lot of people said her singing career was dead. But instead of being embarrassed and running and hiding from all that humiliation, Candy had embraced her life journey and owned it. Today, just like she did at every live appearance she made, Candy got up on that stage and made them shine a light dead on her. She pointed at the ugly scar on her face and then proceed to tell all the young girls in the audience exactly how she got that shit.

“Look at me!” she barked into the mic and demanded as she pulled her long red hair back from her face and made sure everybody could see what she needed them to see. “I said, look at
me
!” she yelled and pointed into the crowd. “Y’all see my face? Y’all see my scar? It’s ugly as hell, ain’t it?”

“Noooo!” people in the crowd screamed. “No!”

“Yeah it is!” Candy shouted back. “It’s ugly and it’s
permanent
! It’s
always
gonna be there. I’ma take this scar with me all the way to my
grave
! And you know why?”

She peered out at all the young girls with a look of quiet seriousness on her beautiful face.

“Because I was
just like y’all
a minute ago! I was
hardheaded
! I was caught up in the hype and chasing the lights! I was silly and naïve!
Greedy
! Impatient! Attracted to the madness! Tricked out on the money, the fame, and the
game
!”

The whole gym was in an uproar as people clapped and whistled at the pure truth Candy was spitting down on them.

 “My little sister
lost her life
because of this industry bullshit! My best friends Dom and Vonnie
died
because we got blinded by this impossible dream! So I’ma need y’all to be way smarter than we was!” Candy hollered into the mic as the young girls of Harlem screamed and clapped.

“I’ma need y’all to keep your eyes
open
. To see straight through the fake glitter and the gold in this industry! I’ma need y’all to have
vision
, and
direction
, and to recognize this shit for what it really is—a
trap
baby! It’s a booby-trap! An ambush! A young girl’s graveyard! Chasing ballas will
kill
you! Do you hear me? Chasing dollars and drugs will
kill
you! But check it out, little sisters. What happened to me and my girls don’t have to happen to you! Y’all can be better than we was. Y’all can
do
better than we did! Y’all got a scar-face sister like me standing up here today to make sure you don’t step on none of those landmines and booby-traps that blew our lives away! I’m standing here today to give you a little bit of
knowledge
so you can turn it into a whole lot of
POWER
!”

The crowd went off. Every hand in the joint was clapping. The young girls were screaming and the dudes in the house were all whistling. Candy’s man Knowledge Graham was standing in the background just a’ watching her. He was a fine-ass investment baller who everybody said was rich as hell. They were a power-couple who had clawed their way up outta the trenches in a real rags-to-riches story. I could tell how much he loved her just by the way he looked at her, and when all the clapping had just about died down, he was still putting his hands together and giving it up for his girl.

Candy got back on the mic and called five teenage girls up on the stage and challenged them to freestyle a rap or a song by finishing the sentence, “My life has meaning because…” The first teenage girl got up there and took the mic and started getting hers in. She had a sweet face and a strong voice, and the lyrics falling out of her mouth were full of gutter street pain mixed with hope and determination.

“Look at Taleah!” Trey said from over my shoulder. I glanced up at him and saw that he was smiling real big and had a look of pride on his face like the young girl was his daughter or something.

“She’s good,” I nodded and agreed. “Real good. Who is she?”

Trey beamed up at the stage. “Taleah’s an ‘around the way’ lil sis that I look out for when I can. She used to hang out with my goddaughter Princess before she overdosed on some bad shit and died. Taleah started hanging around the Crossover a lot after that.”

Lil Mama was up on there on that mic cutting up hard and stealing the show. The girls who got up there behind her were pretty good too, but none of them could match her delivery or her flow. When the contest was over Candy gave all five girls one of her business cards and invited them to join the Girl Power! mentoring program she held over at Knowledge is Power Productions.

The Crossover was on a happy buzz by the time Candy got off the stage, but you know how niggahs are, and just a few minutes later some kind of scuffle broke out near the door.

I peered through the small group of people who were crowding around. I saw two girls and I recognized one of them. They looked just alike, except one was taller and older than the other one. They younger chick was crying and the older one looked mad as hell.

“I thought I told you to stay your stupid ass away from here!” the older one screamed on the teenager as she grabbed her by the back of her shirt and yanked her toward the door. “Get the fuck outta here!” she spit, pushing the young girl around as the kid looked up at her like she was mad as hell. I didn’t know what was going on, but I could see Big Sister wasn’t no joke. Every time I’d ever seen this chick she was flyer than fly, and I couldn’t understand why she would wanna be down with a dude like Flex. She was a lace-front junkie with curls falling down her back. She had on a real tight jean jumpsuit that fit her ass like a second skin, and her two-thousand-dollar Manolo Blahniks were just like a pair I’d seen Beyoncé sporting at a basketball game.

“Wassup, Lil Lee?” Trey bust through the crowd out of nowhere. He towered tall over the two girls and everybody else in range as he quickly took control of the scene. “You came out to get your D.I.V.A on today?” he said like they shared a joke.

Joke, hell. That chick Lil Lee hit him with a look so hot and venomous that her cat-eyes narrowed all the way down to slits. “Don’t fuckin’ play with me, Trey. I came to get my sister up outta this shit hole. Didn’t nobody give her permission to come up in here, but hold up. When it comes to you having your way with little girls you don’t need no fuckin’ body’s permission right?”

The sounds of, “Ooooooh,” rose in the crowd like she had burned Trey a big one.

Trey never dropped his smile.

“C’mon, mami,” he said easily. “Can’t you come down off ya gangsta horse for just one day? Today is for the kids. All of them. Let your sister stay. I took good care of your daughter, didn’t I?” He gave her a real slick smirk. “I’ll take care of your sister too.”

And then he added, “Or anybody else you make me take care of.”

Lil Lee looked like she was ready to start throwing blows. Instead, she nodded, then snatched her sister up again and headed out the door. “A’ight, Trey. A’ight, you muthafucka, you. Remember, you gots to bring ass to get ass! You better watch your fuckin’ back, son. You heard? Me and you got a whole lotta unfinished bizzness. You better watch your fuckin’ back.”

Trey laughed. “I will, baby, but you better watch more than that, Lil Lee. You better watch more than that.”

CHAPTER 12

It was getting late when fourteen-year-old Taleah left the Crossover Community Center and walked back to her apartment building. An alarm was ringing loudly as she entered the lobby, signaling that once again that the elevator was stuck between floors, probably from some hoodlum kicking the shit outta the exterior door.

Sighing, the young girl headed towards the building’s stairwell. She held her breath against the familiar onslaught of pissy air as she pushed against the door and began dashing up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Taleah made it all the way up to the third floor before she was forced to take some air into her burning lungs, and after inhaling one deep breath she sped up to the fifth floor. Exhaling with relief, she pushed through the exit door, turned the corner, and to her horror and surprise, she ran dead smack into a monster from her nightmares. 

“Sup, Taleah,” the tall, skinny dude with the cornrows said as he stared at her from a pair of cold, merciless eyes. Taleah was mute with fear as he pushed up on her and forced her back through the door and into the pissy stairwell.

She had been terrified of running into him ever since the night her best friend Princess had been found dead and she was forced to tell Trey where Princess had copped her drugs.

Unbeknownst to Taleah, she had been spotted spittin’ fiyah on the stage at the Crossover Community Center earlier in the day. No, not by an A&R agent or by a big-time executive of a music label, but by a chick who was so diabolical and cold-blooded that she had busted up in a church and spit down into the casket of a pregnant thirteen-year old girl, and then viciously flung a handful of crack vials into the face of the corpse.

“I want you to get that lil bitch Taleah,” Lil Lee had placed a call and barked an order to the undisputed most brutal member of the Divine Nine. “I want you to fuck that stank ho up!”

Lil Lee pictured the way Trey had sat with his arm wrapped protectively around young Taleah at Princess’s funeral that day, and how he had pushed her safely to the floor when the gats came busting out. That niggah was gonna learn that nobody he cared about was safe from the grip of Lil Lee. Nobody.

Locked in the glare of a murderer’s eyes, Taleah trembled. She had feared this day was coming. She had dreamed of it. She knew Trey had made the wrong drug dealer pay for Princess’s death, and now her best friend’s real killer had come to snuff her life out too. Tears fell down her cheeks. Her entire body was stiff with terror as the nightmare from her dreams fumbled in the pocket of his hoodie and came out with two small vials.

“You know the rules, baby. Around here snitch-bitches get all kinds of stitches,” the young man said quietly as he backed her up against a cold wall. “But that ain’t always true.” He put his head back and laughed, and the cruel, eerie sound bounced off the concrete walls and echoed throughout the empty stairwell.

“Sometimes snitches don’t get stitches,” he told her as he pulled out a clear glass stem and started packing it with crystals. “Sometimes them muh’fuckas just get . . . high. ”

$$$$$

It was real late when we got back to Trey’s apartment, and the house was so quiet that I could tell right away that Chiney wasn’t there. I didn’t have to wonder where she was because I already knew she was somewhere out on the streets chasing her girl Venus and chasing a high too. I understood how much it hurt Trey to see Chiney getting strung out on that street shit, but my mama had been a stone-cold junkie and I didn’t think barring Venus from his crib was gonna stop his sister from getting her fix.