Crackhead Page 3

  Wayne didn’t answer Buck. He just stared at him, sizing up the man he knew wasn’t going to stick around until his next birthday. He was young, but he wasn’t young enough to be bought off with candy. If Buck really wanted to get in good he should have offered him money. Wayne knew the rules to the game his mother played with these men, but Buck was by far the ugliest man he’d seen to date. He felt that if his mother was going to take part in the game, she should at least go after a suave-looking cat, easier on the eyes.

  Buck stood there, still staring at Gloria as he reached into his pocket for his wallet. He pulled out a dollar. “Run on down to the store and get you some candy, son. Eat it out there on the stoop.” Buck held the money out for Wayne, but Wayne didn’t take it.

  I should stuff that dollar down your fucking throat, Wayne thought.

  “What’s wrong, son? You don’t like candy after all?” Buck asked. Wayne was silent.

  “Of course he does,” Gloria answered for Wayne, whacking him on the back of his head. “Boy, you answer people when they talk to you.” Gloria turned her attention back to Buck. “He knows better than to ignore people. He just gets a little shy sometimes. He’s a good boy, though.”

  “That’s all right, Gloria,” Buck said, running his fingers down her cheek. “If the lil’ nigga don’t want to talk, forget it.” Buck knew right then and there that Wayne had peeped game. That shit was going to be a problem and he didn’t like it one bit. “I just guess you one of the few kids who don’t like candy,” Buck bent down to look Wayne in his eyes, “because if you did you’d be takin’ this here dollar and going to get you some.” Wayne remained silent.

  “Boy, you open your mouth and answer Buck or I’m gonna whip yo’ ass!” Gloria warned. Wayne’s young body shook with rage. At that moment, he could have killed both Buck and his mother. She was forcing him to humble himself for the love of a man and his pockets. Wayne felt as if his dignity was being stripped away from him, right along with his mother’s.

  “Yes sir, Mr. Buck,” Wayne growled underneath his breath, trying to hold back the well of tears. “I like Now and Laters.”

  “What’cha say, lil’ man?” Buck asked triumphantly.

  “Now and Laters,” Wayne said, tightening his lips and wiping his eye with the collar of his tattered British Knights T-shirt.

  “Now was that so hard?” Bucked laughed mockingly. “Here ya go, lil’ nigga. Take it.” Buck handed Wayne the dollar. “Now go on down to the store and get you some Now and Laters and a bag of Bon-Tons. And take yo’ time, ’cause me and ya momma here got some business to discuss.” He winked at Gloria.

  Buck had one hell of an itch going on and wanted Wayne out of his hair so that he could scratch it. After giving Wayne the dollar he opened the door, hinting for him to get to steppin’. Wayne threw on his jean jacket, grabbed his scully from off the television, pulled it over his peasy head, and left.

  Immediately, Buck locked the door behind him, figuring that if Wayne couldn’t get back in, he couldn’t interrupt his and Gloria’s groove. With Gloria’s ripe body clouding Buck’s brain, it never dawned on him to make sure that the back door was locked also. Gloria looked at Buck as he smiled menacingly at her. She didn’t really like the way he had brushed Wayne off, but she figured it was better for him to be the bad guy than her. Still, Wayne was a smart kid; he could plainly see that Gloria was an accomplice to the bad guy.

  Wayne was no different from other youngsters in similar surroundings. Like most kids in the hood, he had no childhood. He was wise enough to know that it wasn’t what Buck was saying that made him the bad guy; it was what his mother wasn’t saying. She kept her mouth shut out of fear of saying something that could make Buck leave. The fear of him leaving and taking his wallet with him was what forced her to go along with whatever he put down.

  Once the youngster was gone, Buck wasted no time jumping on Gloria. He pushed her up against the door and lifted her knee-length dress over her head. Tearing off her dingy, off-white bra, he began to suck aggressively on her huge brown nipples.

  “Slow down, baby,” Gloria said, trying to dodge the hot, wet kisses he began burning her neck up with. “We got plenty of time.”

  “Unh, uh,” he said as he continued to grope her body. Buck was far too anxious to get it poppin’. He didn’t even bother to remove her panties. He just pulled them to the side and rammed his crooked dick into her.

  Gloria attempted to scream out in pain from the sudden penetration. Buck hadn’t even gotten her wet yet. He managed to cover her mouth with his hand as he pressed his body up against hers to balance himself. He humped her and began growling like a bear, slobber running down the sides of his big lips as he tried to swallow her tongue. Gloria thought she was going to throw up from the taste of his stink breath.

  Holding her breath, she continued to let Buck fuck her in the hallway. She knew he was about to cum by the way his growl was getting louder and louder. She looked at his face and saw that it had become grossly twisted. He was cumming inside of her.

  Gloria relaxed her body, let out a sigh, and bent over to pick her dress up from the floor. She was relieved that it was over so quickly. But Buck was no one-minute man. Gloria soon found this out when he took her by the hand and told her to go to the bedroom. Once in the room, he pushed her down to the bed and started to hammer away, not noticing that his roughness had made her start to bleed a little. He just kept grunting and pumping away like a wild animal. Tears ran down Gloria’s face as she prayed for him to finish fucking her and just get the hell out, but not without leaving a few ends first.

  Meanwhile, Wayne had walked down the block, letting tears flow freely down his chocolate face. He tried to hold them in, but as he walked to the candy store he just couldn’t. He didn’t mind crying, but he didn’t want that fat bastard to know that he had gotten to him. On top of that, he was sick of the abuse that his mother brought on herself and forced him to put up with.

  Checking out the neighborhood, Wayne spotted some dude parked in a shiny, cream-colored Cadillac across the street. He was puffing on a cigarette and a couple of nice-looking honeys were leaning on the driver’s door hollering at him. He looked like a slick muthafucka. Down the block, four young hustlers were dressed in bomb-ass Adidas, Troop and Gucci suits, and the latest Air Jordans and Reeboks, showing off their whips.

  If only I was old enough, I could get out on my own and make a life for myself, Wayne thought. I could have a nice ride and clothes, too. And with any luck, Wayne thought, he could do something for his mother.

  Wayne approached the store and saw a dirty drunk begging for money. Everyone just walking by, ignoring him. He was only a reminder of where they really were. All of Wayne’s hopes that he thought about on the way to the store had vanished. He felt stuck; he felt unloved.

  Upon walking past the drunken bum, he nodded to a few of the neighborhood boys he knew, who were standing across the street, and ducked into the corner bodega. He grabbed a pack of Now and Laters, Lemonheads, and Sour Patch Kids. While the clerk got Wayne’s change from the cash register, Wayne snatched up two loose cigarettes from a box on the counter and cupped them in his hand.

  “Have nice day,” said Carlos in his thick Spanish accent. Wayne nodded back and slipped out of the store with a brown bag full of candy and two cigarettes hidden in the fold of his scully.

  Looking up at the sun shining brightly in the sky, he blocked his eyes with his hand and thought about the power of the sun. Up until that point, he had never even noticed it. As far as he was concerned, the sun didn’t shine in the ghetto. But today he did notice it, and it seemed happy. It appeared to be smiling at him as if it knew something that he didn’t. Wayne suddenly felt a sense of hope. He looked over at the bum, who everybody pretended not to notice. He jingled his change from the store, handed it to the bum, and walked away.

  After approaching the group of boys he’d nodded to on his way into the store, Wayne managed to cop a book of matches from one of them
. Niggas in the hood could always be counted on to have at least one of three things: a knife, just in case they had to cut a nigga’s shit up; a gun, just in case they had to shoot a nigga’s shit up; or a light, just in case they had to burn a nigga’s shit up.

  Wayne decided to take the back streets to his house so that he could smoke his cigarette without some nosy-ass neighbor running back and telling his moms. That would’ve just given her something else to knock him upside the head for.

  The kids on the block would sometimes give Wayne hell about his mother’s sexual habits, and he always found himself having to go head up with one of them. Wayne’s size had always put him at a hell of a disadvantage. At the age of fifteen, he didn’t look like the average fifteen-year-old boy in the neighborhood. He looked about twelve years old compared to them. Nonetheless, he would never back away from a beef.

  Once Wayne could see his apartment building from the back alley, he took a few last puffs and stomped out the cigarette with his foot. Climbing up the old fire escape to the back door, he figured he’d been gone long enough for Buck to have finished tagging his mother and be on his merry way. He didn’t see or hear anyone, so he assumed that his mother and her company had left. Wayne breathed a sigh of relief at the idea of being alone. He decided to watch television and figure out what to do with the rest of his Saturday.

  He plopped down on the old plaid couch in the living room and searched for the pliers to turn on the old floor-model television. Just then, Wayne remembered that the TV had gone out a few weeks earlier. Sometimes his mother let him carry the little thirteen-inch set out of her room and set it on top of the broken one to watch. But Wayne wasn’t in the mood to lug that thing from the back of the apartment, so he decided that he would just chill up in his mother’s room, eat his candy and watch television there. Wayne took the Now and Laters out and headed to her room. When he got to her closed bedroom door he unwrapped a piece, popped it in his mouth, and proceeded into the room.

  As soon as Wayne opened the door, he spit the candy onto the floor. All he saw was his mother on the bed on all fours and Buck’s big, fat, naked ass behind her, slamming into her as she held her ass high. Wayne’s eyes welled up with tears at the sight of a man hitting his mother doggy-style, as if she were a dog . . . a female dog . . . a bitch. Then the scene got worse. Wayne watched in shock as Buck pulled his penis out of Gloria, turned her around, and busted all over her chest and face.

  “Ma,” Wayne said in a nervous whisper.

  Gloria jumped up and tried to cover herself. She tried hopelessly to wipe the semen off her face. She thought she’d die of shame as Buck grabbed one end of the sheet and began to wipe his dick off with it as if it were nothing but a thang.

  “Wayne!” Gloria said, wrapping the sheet around her. “Wayne, baby, I know what it looks like, but momma was just—”

  “No sense in sugarcoating it,” Buck said, getting up off of the bed and putting on his pants. “The boy’s got eyes. He might be young but he ain’t blind, or all the way dumb for that matter. He knows what his momma’s up to. Probably got him a lil’ tender of his own, with all these fast-ass little girls running around here. Don’t ya, boy?”

  Wayne gritted his teeth and remained silent.

  “You probably be doing to those little girls just what I was doing to your momma here, huh? ’Cept y’all probably keep y’all’s clothes on, huh?” Buck laughed as he buckled his belt and pulled his wallet out of his pants pocket.

  “Be quiet, Buck!” Gloria snapped. “This is between me and my son. Just get the hell out and I’ll call you later.”

  “So it’s like that?” Buck asked, getting angry as he snatched up his shirt from the floor. “Ain’t I the one that gave you grocery money the other day? You couldn’t wait to get me up in this piss hole, and now, just because this muthafucka sees his cunt of a mother for what she really is, I gotta go? You know what? Fuck you and this lil’ nappy-headed nigga.”

  “What?” Gloria squinted her eyes. “Fuck my son? No, you fat, nasty fucker, fuck you! Get the hell out of my house, you fat bastard!”

  Buck didn’t take well to women ordering him around and calling him out of his name. He had to show Gloria what happened to women who disrespected him, especially cheap-ass tricks like her.

  Buck nodded his head; he was plotting. He looked inside his wallet and pulled out a wad of money, just to tease Gloria with. “Fuck me?” he laughed. “Naw, fuck you, you broke-ass bitch. Let’s see how fat I am when you and ya little bastard’s ribs start rubbing together. I’m getting the hell out of here, all right.” Buck pulled his shirt down over his head and slipped on his shoes. “I might be fat, but so is my wallet.” Buck closed his wallet up and put it back into his pocket, letting Gloria know that he wasn’t giving her a goddamn dime. He then walked out of the room, knocking Wayne to the floor.

  “You son of a bitch!” Gloria yelled as she got off the bed and followed behind Buck. “You get back here. You know I need some money.”

  “You gonna have to learn to respect me,” Buck said, heading toward the door. “Now, if you stop while you’re ahead, I just might come back and let you try to earn your keep again. But this time, you done gone and let your mouth fuck it up for you.”

  “Fuck you!” Gloria screamed, chasing behind Buck as he walked out the apartment door. She tripped over the sheet and fell down the outside hallway stairs. She landed at the bottom of the landing, butt naked.

  “Don’t you leave without giving me some fucking dough!” she screamed. Tears of anger flowed down her face. She had just allowed this man to fuck and nut up inside of her, all in the name of the almighty dollar. And now here he was trying to eat and run.

  Buck grabbed Gloria by the arm, dragged her back up the stairs, and flung her into the apartment, where Wayne was standing holding the door open. Wayne picked up his basketball, which was the nearest object, and hurled it at Buck as hard as he could. The ball hit him square in the face. Buck grabbed for his face as blood squirted from his nose.

  “You little muthafucka,” he said, wiping his bloody nose with his shirt. Buck took off toward Wayne, expecting him to try to run from him. To Buck’s surprise, Wayne held his ground. Though it was a noble effort, Wayne was no match for the grown, fat man. Buck hit him in the chest, folding him.

  Gloria managed to make her way to the kitchen and pulled out the entire silverware drawer, going for a knife. She knew she had to do something or Buck would kill Wayne.

  She darted from the kitchen and ran toward Buck, who was on top of Wayne, choking the life out of him.

  “I’m gonna kill you, muthafucka!” Gloria yelled. “Get away from my son.”

  Buck stood up and was able to restrain Gloria by her wrists, forcing her to drop the knife and the sheet. He let go of Gloria and hauled off and slapped the holy shit out of her, leaving his handprint on her face.

  Wayne, still gasping for air, watched helplessly as his mother was brutally beaten. He’d been bullied his entire life, and now he lay there, watching his mother be bullied too. He wished he had a gun. That would even the playing field for sure. He hated the fact that he couldn’t protect his mother or himself. At that very moment, he promised himself that once he got a piece, he’d never be caught without it. He would fear no man.

  Buck stood over Gloria and laughed.

  “Like I said, fuck you, bitch.” Buck snorted the blood and mucus from his nose, bringing it to his throat. He hacked it up and spat in Gloria’s face. “Punk muthafucka,” he mumbled as he looked over at Wayne before heading out the door.

  Butt naked, bruised, and starting to swell up, Gloria crawled over to her son and tried to comfort him. “I’m so sorry,” she cried. “Oh, my baby, I’m so sorry.”

  Gloria tried to put her arms around Wayne but he pushed her away. The damage had already been done and Wayne began to rot from the inside. Hate consumed his being, and it was quickly growing like a cancer. He had no intentions of going out like that.

  Wayne g
ot up and walked out the door, leaving his sobbing mother behind. He had to start putting together a plan. Fuck waiting until he got older. His time was now.

  CHAPTER 4

  Nasty Girls

  I NEED SOME LOOT,” Crystal said, plopping down on her mother’s plastic-covered sofa next to Tonette. Spring was on its way out the door and summer was around the corner. All of the girls were at Crystal’s house shooting the breeze, which is what they usually did when their pockets were short. When a bitch didn’t have no cash, she sure had conversation. “I’m tired of sitting around this house lookin’ at you hoes,” Crystal continued. “I wanna go out, but hell, I’m broke. I ain’t heard from Dink in two days, so I can’t even get nothing from him. I hate not having ends.”

  “You ain’t never lied.” Monique, who was lounging in the wicker Huey P. Newton chair, agreed. “A sista’s pockets are tight.” She leaned forward and squeezed her hands down into the back pockets of her size-eight jeans. She knew she wore a size twelve all day long.

  Monique wasn’t one of those chicks in denial about her weight. Truth was, most of the hottest designers of the day didn’t make clothes that were her real size and she wouldn’t dare wear men’s jeans. A little discomfort served as her motivation to lose weight. However, if she didn’t hurry up and lose some, she was going to end up with chronic yeast infections from wearing her tight-ass Used jeans. She wasn’t fat—just plain ghetto-girl thick. She was a pretty brown-skinned girl. Her trademark was her huge gold, shoulder-length, box braid extensions with the burnt ends that she always wore in a high ponytail. She liked to think she was the freshest of all the girls, overcompensating for the fact that Tonette and Crystal were slim, trim, and fly. They always rolled with the niggas with loot, while Monique would travel all the way to Brooklyn to boost clothes, come back home, and say some dude bought them for her.

  “Damn, I know all of us bitches ain’t broke,” Tonette said. “Yo, Crystal, you ain’t get no money from Dink?” Tonette put her hands on her hips.