Previously: My homeboy Calio, after he see his cousin Tiffany all stabbed up, come cryin’ and breathin’ all heavy. He say, “It’s time to go to war.” Anything move, look dangerous, he ready to rock it to sleep. But I’m like, “Man I not playing with no guns.” He say, “They rock Miss Mary family to sleep. They just rock my cousin to sleep. You know they gotta have one of us on the list.” We paddle to see Tiffany. I can’t believe it’s her all covered with flies and stinking like garbage that been out for a week in summer. Even though she dead, I whisper to her rotting body, “I told you, Tiff, what you done in the dark, it come to the light.”
Calio’s cousin Tiffany was 27. She dressed nice and was real good-lookin’. She was a hood girl. That means she hung out with high-class drug dealers. And every time you look around and one of them get killed in the project, you find out Tiffany just been with them. She make men so jealous they kill each other. Now someone kill her.
We always knew it was gonna happen. I know now she be saying, I wish I woulda listened.
I used to tell her, “The hood love you baby. You the model in the hood. You the hottest girl in the hood.”
But she was playing some cutthroat games, like leading guys on. I knew her, I knew her scam. She’d get high and smoke weed and do drugs. She’d make the average man leave his wife, if he don’t know her.
She bring men from other wards into the hood. Ward Three dealers feel she threaten their territory. She be in the club dancing. She dance good. She been stripping. She got a lotta tattoo.
If I say, hey this guy wanna see you dance, she say, “He got money?” It gotta be over a hundred dollars. She a gamer. She lead men on.
Seeing Tiffany’s massacred body brought memory to me of just a few days earlier, seeing Miss Mary and her family—KK’s grandma and cousins—soaked in they own blood. Now, me and Calio and KK look at each other and just shake our head.
I seen the look in the eye and feel the pain of them. All they was sayin’ to me was Third Ward, we can’t let this go down like that.
And I told them, “Man, I feel what y’all sayin but right now we got 387 people in the projects. We gotta find a way to get everyone outta here. Man, it gonna be all right.” Calio and KK both had they head down, listenin’ to what I’m sayin’.
Back at the projects, we went up to the fourth floor. After that we walk down the balcony, door to door, talkin’ to all the families, ask them if they all right.
When Calio knocked on apartment 4, Miss Ruby open up her door. Inside was her, her grandkids, and her husband. The three-year-old grandson know us so good. He run to the door with a whole lot of peanut butter on his face and ask Calio, “You want some?”
Calio, still hurtin’ so bad from seein’ him cousin Tiff all sliced up, look back at the boy and laugh and say, “No Little Man I’m good. Thanks Little Man, I needed that smile you give me, Little Man.” I never seen Calio smile the way he smile at that kid, all 32 teeth showin’.
That’s when I knew he was comin’ over a bit what happen to his cousin, Tiffany. But deep down, of course, I knew the hurt still there.
The boy was still handing the peanut butter jar out to all three of us “Who want some?” he ask. I looked at the little kid and say, “Man when I was a little kid I used to eat that same kind of peanut butter—the kind with the jelly swirled in.”
After that me and Calio and KK be talkin’ and I say, “Man, we gotta figure a way to get folks outta here.”
We each went to different floors, checkin’ to make sure everyone was eating and feeling okay and then we radio each other and say, “Radio check,” which means everybody good. That don’t mean the violence be over.
To be continued . . .
