White Lines (14 page)

She smiled. He thought she was so pretty. The other girls began to touch each other. They rubbed one another and kissed each other in places that stunned Marquis. Before long, his dick was once again at attention. Chocolate stood before him. She took off her robe and peeled off her panties. Discarding her bra to reveal her DDs, she let him touch her body. He liked the way she felt. Soft, like Charmin. She was so soft. He touched her, and she moaned for him. He really liked that. It made him feel so good. She didn’t rush him, and she stood confidently as he explored her body.

Straddling him, she said, “Put it in.”

Marquis’s hands trembled as he grabbed his dick and rubbed it against her pussy. He didn’t know what to do, and was nervous and slightly uncomfortable. Seeing his inexperience, she took his dick and slowly inserted it inside of her warmth. Marquis had never felt anything so wonderful in his life. He couldn’t believe that he was losing his virginity to a grown-ass woman, and having an orgy to boot. She rubbed herself as she rode him. She seemed to be really getting off on what he was doing, and this boosted his confidence.

After several minutes, Marquis couldn’t hold back anymore. He began to moan loudly.

“That’s it, baby. I feel you cummin,” she said breathlessly. She stood up in the nick of time and Marquis burst all over the place.

“Aaaaagh!”

Chocolate girl kissed Marquis, her tongue mingling with his. Then she pecked him softly on the lips, and smiled. “Happy birthday,” she said.

Marquis was drained. He was also slightly uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure why, but he was. He adjusted his clothes, and stood up. He wasn’t sure what he should say, and the women went right back to talking among themselves, as if nothing had ever happened. He cleared his throat and fidgeted nervously, with his hands in his pockets. “Thank you,” he said, not knowing what else to say.

They smiled at him, and told him he was welcome, and that he could come back any time. He turned and walked upstairs and found his father and his friend James sitting at the kitchen table sharing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

Leo smiled at his son. “How’d it go?” he asked.

Marquis smiled, shyly. “I did what I could,” he said.

The men laughed, and shook hands with him in a congratulatory way. Leo poured his son a drink, and Marquis took it eagerly. The hot liquor burned his chest, and more than ever before Marquis felt like a man.

When they went home, neither of them mentioned the incident to In-grid. Marquis lay in his bed all night replaying the scene in his head. He would tell all his boys what had happened. And once again, he’d be the envy of all his friends.

The year that he turned thirteen was a year of a lot of change for Marquis. He was no longer a virgin, and he began to feel and act like a grown man. He felt more privileged than ever to be the son of a man with so much power, so much control. He was the heir to the throne, and he was being groomed to take over when the time came. But suddenly, his father began to be absent for more prolonged periods of time. Suddenly Leo wasn’t coming home every night, and days would pass before he saw his father again. Then, when Leo did come home, he would sleep for hours and hours, and it seemed that not even an atomic bomb could rouse him from his sleep. Being the perceptive young man that he was, Marquis began to notice that his mother was putting in far more hours at work than she had before. She was always tired, falling asleep almost as soon as she got home from work. Ingrid was exhausted, trying to keep things from falling apart in her husband’s absence.
And Leo was becoming more unpredictable—and unreliable—than ever.

Marquis was thirteen years old, and already his relationship with his father was fractured. The man Marquis had once idolized and adored was now absent from his life more often than not. It seemed that the facade he’d been shown of a father who could conquer the world had suddenly crumbled, to reveal a man as tainted and as human as any other.

Marquis was friends with a couple of young men from around the way. Sammy and Martin were brothers, and then there was Chauncey. These were his boys. All of them grew up in the same building, and soon they became known collectively as the 55 Holland niggas. They got into all kinds of mischief together, all of them enduring differing levels of poverty in the era of President Ronald Reagan. Not many male role models existed in most of their families. All of their mothers were struggling to make ends meet. So the hood, and the camaraderie they found within it, became their family. And together, they grew up.

One afternoon in 1985, Marquis sat on the edge of his bed, fully engrossed in his Atari game system. Pac-Man was chomping up points, as Sammy and Chauncey looked on. It was always fun to hang out at Marquis’s house. His mother wasn’t fussy, and she didn’t mind the noise. Plus, he was the only one in their building with an Atari. Marquis was defeated by the game, and he relinquished the joystick to Sammy. As they continued watching the game, Chauncey started a conversation that would change Marquis forever.

“Yo, I forgot to tell you I saw your pops yesterday.”

Marquis looked at his friend, wondering about the specifics. He hadn’t seen his dad in three days. Whenever he heard his father was in the hood, Marquis would get excited at the thought of seeing him. Someone would tell him that his father was on South Avenue at the store, and Marquis would head there immediately, in anticipation of seeing his dad. He thought back to the last time he’d seen his father. Marquis had been walking down the block, feeling good and thinking he was looking that way, too. Out of nowhere, it seemed, his father came calling
his name. He stopped and greeted Leo Graham, the always well-dressed gentleman of his time.

Leo had stepped back dramatically, and looked at his son’s sweat suit. “Where you going looking like that?” he had asked.

Marquis smiled and held his hands up, defensively. “What’s wrong with how I look?” Leo shook his head. “As long as you look like that, you won’t never get money. Not looking like that! You got it all wrong.”

Marquis frowned, and laughed his father’s comments off.

“Let me tell you something,” Leo said animatedly, leaning close to his son. “Even if you ain’t
got
no money, you gotta always
look
like you got money. That way you can always
get
some money.”

Marquis had to sift that through his mind for a couple of moments. But when he figured out what his father was telling him, it had made perfect sense. He meant that a man who has nothing can always get something, if he looks like he already has it all. These were the types of jewels Leo often gave his son. Little tidbits of wisdom that Marquis could tuck into his mental Rolodex.

Marquis remembered that encounter now, as Chauncey mentioned seeing his father. He was wondering what Leo was up to, and how he was getting money. Like any young man coming of age, he wanted to understand his father—his first male role model—fully, and Leo’s life was anything but an open book. “Where’d you see him at?”

Chauncey laughed in reaction to Sammy’s demise in the video game, as his man was gobbled up. Then he turned his attention back to Marquis. “In front of 55 Holland. He was out there copping from AJ. and them. I think he saw me, but he just kept it movin’ and shit.”

Marquis sat silently, mulling over what he’d just heard. Sammy and Chauncey were focused on the game, not noticing the troubled expression on Marquis’s face. Everybody knew A.J. sold crack on the block. That was common knowledge in the hood. So naturally, Marquis probed further. “Copping from A.J.?” he asked with a frown. “Copping what?”

Both Sammy and Chauncey looked directly at Marquis, appearing confused. Chauncey said, “Crack, nigga. You knew your pops was smokin’, right?”

Marquis laughed, uneasily. “Get the fuck outta here,” he said. “My pops ain’t smokin’ crack. You must be crazy.” Sammy and Chauncey exchanged glances, knowingly. Marquis watched the exchange, and felt his insides bubbling with anxiety. He’d come to some conclusions about his pops. He wasn’t
that
naive. He knew about Leo’s drug use. As a young child he had witnessed his father snorting cocaine with his friends on numerous occasions. Marquis had been too young to understand that it was illegal, but he had seen some odd behavior. Eventually, Marquis had asked his mother about what he had witnessed. He had surprised her one day when he was nine years old by asking, “Why’s daddy always sniffing soap powder?” That question had sparked a big fight between Ingrid and his father, whose drug use had been beginning to spin out of control. That argument was still etched in Marquis’s brain. So he knew that his dad had his struggles. He knew that his father was using
some
drugs. But to think of him smoking
crack
—being a fiend—was more than he could imagine. His father was no crackhead. He was supposed to be the king of the world.

Sammy spoke up. “Nah, Marquis. The nigga’s smoking. Trust me.” He set the joystick down, and gave his friend a look of sincerity. “A.J. and them niggas been serving him. I thought you knew.” The boys grew silent as Sammy continued to play the game, and Marquis’s world came crashing down. They became engrossed in the game once more, Chauncey and Sammy teasing each other about their lack of skills. But Marquis’s mind was reeling. His father was a crackhead, and it seemed that everyone was aware of it except for him.

They heard a knock at the front door and listened as Mrs. Graham answered it. After a few moments, Martin entered the room, greeting all his boys and plopping down on the beanbag chair in the corner.

“Where the fuck you been, nigga?” Sammy chided his brother. “You been missing since right after you finished your Froot Loops this morning.”

Martin shrugged. “So? Why you worried about where I been?” He tossed a nearby pillow at his curious brother’s head. As he sat back once again, a thick wad of cash fell from the pocket of his sweatpants, and
Martin set it beside him. The eyes of all of his friends widened immediately.

“Yo, where the fuck you get that from?” Sammy asked.

Martin grinned at his brother slyly. He had known the money would impress his boys. He was thrilled about his newfound wealth. “I made all that today,” he said, proudly. “I’m hustling for A.J. now.”

“You selling crack?” Chauncey asked, incredulously. To him that was impressive, to say the least. Selling drugs took guts, it took heart.

Marquis barraged him with questions. “Word? How that work? How much you get to keep? You gotta stand on the block and shit?”

Martin explained the particulars. He filled them in on how A.J. had approached him, and had asked if he wanted to get down with his team. Martin and his family were struggling. Their moms was on welfare, the money was slow, and he was tired of being the kid that never had shit. All Marquis heard was that Martin had made all that money—that whole big knot of cash—in one day. That was all the time it took to get all that paper. Martin got to keep thirty dollars of every one hundred dollars he made. At thirteen years old, those numbers didn’t sound too bad.

Marquis had just found out that his father was a crackhead. The man who had once been his hero was no more. He couldn’t go to his mother for the things he wanted, the material things he felt he had to have. He saw his mother struggling, working double shifts at the home for the mentally retarded to keep them afloat, while his father was slipping. He would never dream of burdening her further with any frivolous requests for sneakers or clothes. But Marquis wasn’t used to having to do without. He was accustomed to having the best. Instantly, he knew what he had to do.

Marquis got on his grind. He started spending all of his time in the streets. He went to school, but as soon as the last bell rang, he was on the block. And the money came pouring in. He tried at first to keep his activities hidden from his mother. So for that reason he kept his school attendance up, and he tucked his money in his underwear drawer. But it wasn’t long before he reasoned that he was getting more money standing on the block than he ever would sitting in a classroom. Still, he kept balancing his junior high school education and his education on the block. Marquis took his part of the block and worked it like his forty acres. The cold New York winters never deterred him from getting that money. He would throw on three or four layers of clothes and a skully and stand outside all night long. The money came like clockwork, the fiends desperate for a steady supplier. Unlike his peers, who turned their pagers off at midnight to get a good night’s sleep, Marquis’s business was open all night, like a true hustler. His pager was never off, and custys beeped him day and night. Ingrid was often working nights, and this allowed thirteen-year-old Marquis to come and go as much as he needed to in order to chase a sale. He would get up out of his bed if a fiend paged him. He’d throw his clothes on over his pajamas and go out and get that paper. He never turned down an opportunity to make money. He was consistent and, for the most part, likable. He had a no-nonsense way about him that made it hard for the fiends to approach him wrongly. But at the
same time, he was a friendly and funny dude, which made it hard for the other young hustlers to hate him. A.J. certainly took notice of this young protégé, who wasn’t afraid of hard work. Marquis’s enemies were outnumbered by his friends. And to A.J. it seemed that he was a natural-born hustler.

Then came Marquis’s friend Jamari. Jamari lived in the Mariner’s Harbor projects not far from where Marquis and his crew lived. Jamari went to school with them, and often hung around wanting to be down. Marquis was the only one who was really willing to give the unknown boy a chance. And he was further drawn to Jamari when he found out that the boy’s mother was a crackhead. Marquis could identify, although he imagined that it must be different when the fiend was your
mother.
Many nights Jamari didn’t go home, since there was seldom anything to eat there anyway. Ingrid fed him a meal on many occasions, as Jamari became Marquis’s good friend. And by the time they finished the eighth grade, Jamari was practically living with Marquis. He spent the night more often than not. Ingrid didn’t complain, and Marquis unselfishly shared what he had with this kid, who he felt he had so much in common with. They became like brothers with different mothers.