West End Girls (20 page)

Sinclair, awake now, watched Cammie toss and turn, and cry out off and on during her fretful sleep. It wasn't as if Sinclair's mind was free and clear either. Yesterday she and Malcolm had actually gone down and cased out a bank to rob. He was going through with this. It was unbelievable. It was as if they hadn't watched
Set it Off
a hundred times when it first came out. There was no way she wanted to end up like Queen Latifah in that movie.

Maybe he was thinking more of them ending up like Jada. “That would be cool,” she mumbled, as she sat up, stretching like a cat. With Curtis and Unique holed up in that room all the damn time she had been sleeping in the room with Cammie, Gina, Apple, and Tanqueray, who had been home more than usual the last couple weeks. But it was no worse than being in the room with Apple, Gina, and Unique, breathing hard all night and passing hot gas. “Ugh, I can't live like this much longer,” Sinclair admitted to the universe.

Again Cammie cried out, kicking her legs and ending the struggle in a whimper. “What is on her mind?” Sinclair pushed the little girl slightly, hoping to jar her from the nightmare.

Malcolm was on Sinclair's mind. Forget trying to rob the bank, he'd been acting funny moody. One minute he was acting like he was all that and some, and then next, he was all clingy, as if they were kickin' it like a couple. Which was even weirder, considering he had a girl and all, or so he said. She hadn't once seen or heard about Mercedes since that afternoon, and even that day, he never took her no damn movies. He just sat up in that hot room with her, laughing and talking until she went to sleep. So if she was his girl, hmph, she ain't enough. Sinclair harrumphed.

Malcolm would even be at the bus stop, waiting like a puppy, when she got there. She'd been taking the bus because Finest had stopped picking her up. She was hoping it was because he was liking her more and didn't want the conflict. Of course, she had no foundation for that fantasy, but still, it was a good one.

Yeah, the last couple weeks was weird, and not to mention the house getting rebuilt. Unique claimed she didn't know nothing about it. They had asked Deb over the phone if he knew, but he was still stuck on stupid. All he could talk about was, he'd heard that Gold Mouth's body was found all shot to hell. Sinclair was actually relieved and hoped it was true. She'd asked Finest about it, but he didn't know. She'd asked Malcolm about it, but he didn't know either. He was just upset that he wasn't the shooter.

Back to Finest. Yeah, Finest had been seriously MIA, so work was hard to find, and the hustle was slow. She and Malcolm were reburn-ing movies like crazy, and the quality was less than perfect. Plus, they just lowered the prices and took them out anyway. It was working, considering they didn't have any of the newest stuff. Finest had never given her the camcorder or taken her to the movies to show her how to do it. He'd taken the camera a while back, talking about upgrading it.

Sinclair and Malcolm asked Floyd, but he was too busy getting his dental work enhanced to be bothered with them. He looked a hot mess with diamond inlaid in five of his top teeth. Malcolm had talked about getting some stones, but she told him not to.

“That's some
W.E.
shit,” she told him. “I'm surprised Floyd is rolling like that.”

There was no way Sinclair could afford to get a camera. She was still barely holding onto that money Tanqueray had given her. Speaking of Tanqueray, that heiffer was obviously seeing some man again. She came home late last night looking like crap and smelling like something worse. Whoever she was with must have been screwing her in the backseat of somebody's car or in an alleyway, because she never even took a bath or nothing before coming home. He must've been some hood dog, some scrub who maybe didn't even have a car, because she always came home walking. She smelled like pure stank and didn't even shower before morning. Didn't she realize it was summer time? If it was like that, she didn't even need to come home at all.

Sinclair couldn't help but wonder what kind of man would want a woman like Tanqueray. Well, truth be told, Sinclair always admired the way Tanqueray looked, but lately she looked like just pure hood. At least Omar kept her clean and put up.

Sinclair saw Omar cruising through the
P
the other day. He must've been looking for Tang. He obviously didn't know the house was gone because, when he got to the empty lot with just the concrete foundation, he slowed his roll and stared. Sinclair ducked behind the dude's limo. Yeah, he'd been there every day too, watching the rebuilding of her mother's house. He was a nice white guy. She'd talked to him once. He was just nosy, Sinclair figured. He was obviously rich. It musta been nice to just have nothing better to do than sit in the hood with a bodyguard and watch a poor woman's house go up.

Sinclair thought about her own situation, getting up and going to Malcolm's and then out to hustle in the parking lots of supermarkets. “Yeah, must be nice,” she mumbled in regards to the man.

Sinclair hadn't called any of her friends from school since the whole thing with Deb went down. There was no way she was calling them now. To tell them what? Nah, she wasn't gonna do that.

Glancing over at the girls again, who were drooling and snoring, she caught Cammie doing the unexpected. She was rubbing on her genitals hard, as if she knew how to bring on that tingle that touching one's self could cause. Sinclair watched a few seconds more, to make sure that's what she was actually doing. Could it be an accident? Sinclair counted in her head. “Hell, she's only nine. She don't need to be doing that.”

With that, Sinclair reached over and slapped Cammie hard on her bare thigh.

Cammie's eyes opened, and her hands released their clutch on her snatch. She looked at Sinclair. “Don't be hitting me!” she yelled out.

“I can hit you if I want!”

“I'll tell Curtis on you.”

“Please . . . that nigga ain't my daddy. You besta recognize.” Sinclair stood now, gathering her clean things to head to the shower.

“He is my daddy. He told me he was. He said to call him daddy when we are together.”

“Together? You act like y'all datin',” Sinclair said under her breath before chuckling off to the bathroom.

While in the shower, she felt the door open but assumed it was one of the kids. As long as she took to shower and wash her hair, she knew better than to lock the door. One day Marquis almost busted it down trying to get there to take a piss. That's what shower curtains were for anyway. She didn't care, as long as the curtain was closed. And Unique had just come home with a pretty blue shower curtain with flowers the other day.

“Hey! What the fuck!” she yelped, covering up her goodies as fast as she could, her tranquil moment under the warm spray of the shower abruptly interrupted by Curtis.

“Oh sorry,” Curtis said, peeking at her. He didn't even close it right away, smiling like it was funny, eyeing her up and down.

Damn perv! And don't think I'm not telling my sister!
Sinclair listened to him pissing like a racehorse. He flushed and left.
Didn't even wash his nasty stank hands. Ugh. Nigga better not ever touch me.

Sinclair caught the bus to the
P
. She hated taking the bus there because of all the ugly folks getting on. The driver, he was ugly too.
Dang! Why folks gotta be so ugly?

“The
P
!” the driver called out, and the doors opened with a
shush
.

Malcolm was standing there waiting. It was a clingy day, she could tell already. He looked a little different today, meaner, madder, and more intense and determined to be thuggish. But in a way, it made him kinda sexy. He was looking more and more like the kind of guys that turned her head. Like Finest. Today with his low-riding jeans and his jersey unbuttoned, exposing his wife-beater, she noticed a few muscles that he'd been working on coming out. Yeah, kitty was purring just a little, to her surprise. Normally it took longer. They usually had to hang out awhile before he would do something or say something to get her kinda hot. But, now, just seeing him made her snatch get juicy.

“Hi.”

“Yeah,” he sneered, taking her roughly by the hand, locking his fingers with hers.

Malcolm may have been looking tough, but he had a grip on her hand that she knew meant “cling to me.”

Sinclair looked around to see who might be watching, causing this performance, but the streets were pretty clear, short of those who had just gotten off the bus.
Maybe Mercedes could see and back the hell up, maybe even drop dead.

As they cleared the corner, Sinclair got a clear view of the lot, the empty slab of concrete that once held her home. There were no construction workers today though. No white limo either. “Where did all the people go?” she asked, stopping dead in her tracks.

“Somebody musta ran outta money.”

“I dunno. Maybe the insurance company did. See, Unique's been too busy with her man and not thinking about Mama's house. I bet they called and she just—”

“Why does Unique do everything? Tanqueray is the oldest?” Malcolm asked.

“Tanqueray don't do shit. I been told you that,” Sinclair said, rolling the words around in her mouth, causing a bitter taste to come up. She loved her sister, but Tanqueray wasn't fit to be the eldest. She should have been the baby. Or a cousin. She just wasn't responsible enough for anyone to follow. Not unless you wanted a lesson in dressing good, or smoking yay. And even then, all those clothes they heisted from Omar's were gone. Tanqueray had sold them, and out of the money she got for them, she'd not offered up a damn dime of it.
I could have gone to jail for that shit!
Sure, she got some cash initially, but them dresses had to have pulled in some serious notes.

She and Malcolm stood for a moment and looked through the tall gate that closed off the construction. The neighbors' houses were all fixed up too. They had taken care of all that over a week ago. But this house, the big house their Mama had, was like a wound that had healed over with the removal of a boil or something.

The lot was clean and quiet, and now Sinclair could see everything, feel everything. The emptiness. Malcolm tugged at her hand, urging her to walk with him, to leave what was clearly painful for her to see.

“I wonder when they are gonna finish it . . . so we can move back in?”

“You wanna move back in?”

“Yeah. I can't stand the West End. It gives me a bad vibe all the time. I don't sleep good, and I'm not happy over there. The kids are acting out and—”

“I heard about a shooting the other day. Another drive-by. Nigga named Red got clipped.”

“Yeah, they always killin' and shootin' up shit over there. It's terrible. And, Curtis, he's a damn perv, peeking at folks in the baffroom and all that.”

“Is it like that? Damn! You should stay over here tonight.”

“You think your mama would let me?”

“Mama ain't home. Ain't nobody home. Now that Floyd got his fronts, he's rolling with Finest nonstop. They into some deep shit too.”

“Like what?” Sinclair asked excitedly

Malcolm didn't answer, and Sinclair didn't ask again.

Together they went into his mother's house, which was quiet and obviously empty. Sinclair could smell fresh beans cooking. “You cookin'?”

“No, she left me some chilli to heat up and shit. It's good, if you like that kinda stuff.”

“Of course, I do.”

“Well, I don't. I want a steak. I want to eat caviar. If I had paper like that, like dude in the white limo and shit, I'd have caviar. You seen his snacks and shit. He and that driver, they be snacking on expensive shit. That bottled water alone is like seven dollars.”

“You be checking it out, huh?” Sinclair chuckled.

Malcolm chuckled too. “Hell yeah. And if I was rolling like that, I'd buy a house. I'd buy this house. You know, I was thinking . . . if the money really is in the hands of the dope man, how come they don't own our streets? How come the white man still owns our streets, sitting in his limo, watchin' yo' mama's house get built? I bet he owns that house or is gonna buy it as soon as it's built.”

“What? He don't own my mama's house. You talking too deep now.” Sinclair chuckled, sitting at the table ready to eat. She was through talking deep, thinking deep, and even using good diction.

Over this summer she'd gone from debutant candidate to straight-up hood rat. She didn't care. Reality was sinking in. She wasn't going to the fancy school in the fall. She was headed to East Palo Alto High with Malcolm, with everybody else on this block. So could quit fronting and faking and living the double life now.

“Yo mama's beans be jammin'.”

Yeah, at first Unique was cooking up a storm, but lately, since Curtis had been showing up more and more, the eating had gotten slim around her place. Or she was just out of food stamps early this month. The first was coming around, so maybe good eats would be coming back soon.

Malcolm pulled a bowl down from the cabinets and filled it with beans. He took a package of saltine crackers from the box and slid them over to her. “I'm saying, if the money is really in our streets, how come we don't own our streets? See, that lets you know we don't got no money. It's the white man, the feds, that's got our money. And the drug money, we ain't got no drug money floating around in this hood neither, or we'd own the hood. All the blow and crack out there, it don't belong to us, or we'd be selling it and using the money on us. Dig?”