Dutch (9 page)

“Nigga, please! Ain’t no way you bagged that bu-gee bitch. You? Aw, hell no,” Dutch replied.

“Yo, that’s my word. Shortie on my dick, callin’ me every five minutes and shit, talkin’ ’bout when we gonna go back to Pebbles
Beach so she can suck me off,” said Craze, laughing along with Dutch. Pebbles Beach was slang for the rooftop of any project
apartment building.

“Let me find out, nigga. You musta’ started stickin’ niggas or something. Ain’t no way you gonna tell me she just fuckin’
you on the strength.”

“Naw, yo, I been swingin’ with that cat Sugar Ray from time to time and you know how Ray get down. I ain’t gonna front, he
been schoolin’ a nigga on the broads,” Craze admitted.

Dutch knew Sugar Ray was a wannabe pimp. Ray was a top player in Newark, specializing in women. And while he wasn’t a real
pimp in the true sense of the word, he tried his damndest to live the life of one.

“Angel said the chop shop connect got popped. Y’all ever find another one?” asked Dutch.

“Naw, you know how niggas is about connects.”

“Then why you ain’t start clockin’ wit’ Angel? She said she tried to put you on but you ain’t want to. The fuck up wit’ you,
nigga? You and Scotty hangin’ out again?” Dutch questioned, half joking, half serious.

“Fuck you, nigga. I ain’t smokin’ no crack.” Then he turned up the radio playing Colonel Abrams’s “Music Is the Answer.”

“So, what is you doin’?” asked Dutch, turning the volume back down.

“Yo, I’m sayin’, shit just ain’t been right. It’s like I been stuck, you know. You know I’ve known you forever and it’s always
been me and you. You know what I’m sayin’? Roc and Zoom my niggas and Shock, God bless the dead. Angel, she like my lil’ sister.
But, wit’ out you…” Craze completed his sentence by shaking his head, not knowing how to express what he had been feeling
for the past year and a half since Dutch had been gone.

Dutch understood. Craze needed to say no more.

“But, now… since you back, I know shit gonna be all right. Word. I know it,” he said, his words expressing nothing but love
for Dutch.

When they reached Newark, the streets themselves seemed to welcome Dutch home with the sounds of a hundred booming systems,
children laughing, and people crowding the streets, and the urban smells mingling in Dutch’s nostrils. Young women ornamented
the city blocks like jewels and became the twinkle in his eyes. Dutch felt invigorated, renewed, free.

They rode up Elizabeth Avenue and made a right onto Pomona. Pomona Gardens was on the corner where Craze pulled over.

“Why she move here?” Craze asked.

Dutch didn’t know, and he didn’t answer. He just opened the door and got out of the car.

“Wait here,” he said, walking away from Craze and over to the building he had been told his mother lived in. He searched the
panel for Murphy, Delores’s last name, but it wasn’t listed. Luckily, someone was coming out and he entered the building and
took the elevator to the fourth floor. He found 406, Delores’s apartment, and knocked on the door. Waiting, he felt butterflies
and nervousness.
Why didn’t she write me back? And why’d she move over here?

There was no answer.

He knocked again.

Something in his heart told him his mother was home. He decided to knock once more, but as he was about to, the door slowly
opened and his mother stood in the doorway in her housecoat.

“Hey, Ma,” he said, not knowing whether to hug her or just stand still.

She gazed at him momentarily, then spoke. “When you get home?”

“Today, just now,” Dutch answered, feeling awkward standing in the hallway, seemingly barred from what should have been his
home. She stepped aside, though, and pushed the door open wider to let him pass.

Dutch looked around the place. It was the same size as their apartment in Brick Towers, just more airy because it had more
windows.

“So, you moved, huh?”

“Yeah,” was all Delores said as she lit a Newport.

“Well, whatcha’ do with all the stuff I bought you?” he asked.

“You bought?” she said as if he was crazy.

“Ma, listen, I know I messed up. And I know you probably mad at me, but…” His words made him think about all the visiting
days his heart had yearned to hear his name called. Everybody else had someone waiting on them with open arms in the visiting
room. “But, you coulda’ came to see me at least once or wrote me back. I wrote you every week and you just moved on me.”

“Because, you a goddamn fool and a coward, that’s why.” Delores glared as she blew out a gust of smoke.

Her words caught him by surprise. She had never cursed him. It didn’t anger him or add to the pain he already felt, but he
was shocked.

“That’s right, you heard me. Yous’a goddamn fool and you damn right I was mad, not at what you did, at what you didn’t do.
You let them muhfuckers lock you up like a damn dog?” she said with her voice a little higher. “And then you expect me to
write you?” she asked again with that crazy look she’d fix her face with. “Nigga, you must be crazy, the words I had for you.
Shit, better I didn’t write,” she said, crushing her cigarette in the ashtray.

Dutch stood quiet in the middle of the floor, head bowed. She was right; he had let them lock him up. He thought back to the
night at the port, how they surrounded him with guns drawn. He gave in without a fight. Animals fight back when they’re cornered,
they fight to the death, but he had given up without a fight.

“You let them take you from me and you didn’t do a damn thing about it. So, you damned right I left all that shit you bought
me right where it was to rot, left it. All that bullshit you traded your freedom for, you expected me to keep it?” she screamed
at him. He felt nervous, wondering if she would hit him. She was so emotional, yet her insanity was crystal clear to him.
His mother’s eighteen-month silence now spoke volumes. Every visiting day, every letter unanswered, even the unannounced change
of residence said to him,
Nigga, be a man.
All that shit he had wasn’t worth the time he had spent locked in a cage.

“I ain’t goin’ back,” he said, repeating what he’d told himself earlier that day in the prison cell.

“Nigga, you goddamn right you not, ’cause I’ll kill you myself before I let you. You hear me?” she screamed. “I’ll kill you
myself!”

Her voice was cracking as tears rolled down her face in torrents. She had emptied her heart of the bitterness and it now lay
unprotected from her emotions. Dutch felt the pain and hurt released by her words. He reached and tried to embrace her, but
she shoved his hands away.

“Get off of me! Don’t hug me!” she hollered at him and twirled around so he couldn’t hold her. “Nigga, go on out there and
take back what them people took from you!” she yelled.

Dutch had never seen his mother like this. She was always strong-willed, but she now sounded like a gang leader. He didn’t
know about his father and how the years without his father had worn on her. Delores had sacrificed her heart to set that man
free so long ago, and for Dutch to go out and give his life away to those people was, to her, the ultimate betrayal. For everything
their union represented, for all her heart’s pain and for all the years of loneliness and sacrifice, she had Dutch to compensate.
But she wouldn’t let him disappoint her again. He turned to walk out the door.

“Bernard!” his mother called out to him.

He turned to face her, ready and willing to do anything for her.

“I just wanted to say the name,” she said, turning from him.

Dutch walked out, closing the door behind him.

Craze turned the Prelude onto Dayton Street, and they saw Angel yelling at a cop car that was pulling off. She was screaming
curses in Spanish like a madwoman, waving her arms up and down.

“Usted siempre estan jodiedo con nosotro. Por que no sevan a otra la do a joder. Marditos idiota!”
Angel could be heard up and down the block.

“Same ol’ Angel,” smirked Dutch, happy to see her again.

“Naw, she worse,” said Craze, shaking his head.

“Ahhh, Poppi, you’re home,” she said, running to Dutch with open arms. She hugged him close. “Oh, my God, I can’t believe
it, I missed you so much,” she said while holding him.

“What’s up, baby girl? How you been?” Dutch asked as she let go.

“Man, I’m chillin’, but look at you,” she said, admiring the difference a year and a half had made.

“Damn, you got mad taller and you done got all diesel and shit,” Angel chimed.

“You too,” Dutch replied, referring to the fistful of dollars she was gripping.

“This? This ain’t shit, man. Them fuckin’ punk-ass police got shit hot as a firecracker on the Fourth of July round this bitch.
But, what’s up with you?” she asked. Angel was smiling from ear to ear. She had missed Dutch like crazy and was happy he was
home. Besides, she had a surprise waiting for him.

“So, what you about to do?” she asked with a twinkle in her eye.

“Why?” inquired Dutch.

“ ’Cause I got a surprise for you,” she said with a devilish grin.

“I hope it’s some pussy,” cracked Dutch as Angel playfully hit him and blushed.

“No, Poppi, it ain’t no pussy. It’s better than that,” she retorted.

“Better than a shot after eighteen months?” asked Dutch, as if to say “no way.”

“Better! Just come on,” she said, grabbing his arm, leading him to Craze’s car. “And you better not have told him, either,”
she shouted to Craze with an evil eye.

“Girl, I ain’t told no body nothin’,” Craze said, flagging his hand at her to be quiet as he started the car.

“So, what’s up with this Kazami nigga you workin’ for?” asked Dutch.

“Nothin’, but the nigga’s definitely strong. He gettin’ it from Newark to Linden. His stamp is everywhere. Bundles don’t move
unless it’s Wild Cherry or Tango and Cash. I got that Dark Angel ’cause that Tango and Cash shit was killin’ niggas and shit.
So, I changed the stamp. These niggas still runnin’ around lookin’ for that Tango shit. Ain’t they crazy?” she asked, shaking
her head, not understanding a dope fiend’s logic.

Dutch silently agreed as they pulled into a large junkyard off Frelinghuysen. They all got out as Mr. Ramirez came out of
the garage, wiping his hands on a dirty rag.

“Que tal,
Angel?” he asked.

“Que pasa? El ese de quien yo te able,”
said Angel.

“Hello, Dutch, I heard a lot about you. Good to meet you,” said the older Dominican man.

“And the same,” said Dutch, shaking the man’s hand as Craze greeted Mr. Ramirez.

“I’m ready for it,” Angel said as Mr. Ramirez went back inside the garage with the three of them close behind.

“Now, we gonna do this right, so close your eyes,” Angel said as she covered Dutch’s eyes and navigated him to the rear of
the garage. She stopped him and removed her hands from his eyes. Dutch saw a black BMW 745il with peanut butter leather interior
and gold-dipped BBS rims.

“Surprise!” yelled Angel.

Dutch just looked at the BMW, then at Angel as she jumped into his arms and kissed him on the cheek. Dutch couldn’t speak.
For the first time in his life, he was speechless.

“Guess where it came from?” she questioned.

“Where?” Dutch asked, barely getting the word out.

“From the port that night; it’s one of the cars we stole.”

“This stolen?”

“Yeah, nigga, but it’s tagged,” she said, smiling proudly.

“Tagged?” Dutch had never heard the term before.

“Yeah, this car got the serial numbers on it from a demolished BMW out in the junkyard. We got this, don’t worry.”

“How the fuck I’m suppose to register it?” asked a skeptical Dutch.

“We did that already. I took care of that, don’t worry,” said Mr. Ramirez, patting Dutch on the back.

“And one more thing,” she said, holding up a driver’s license with Dutch’s picture on it, just not his name.

Dutch took the license and looked at his picture in awe. He had never expected this kind of homecoming.

“Yo, how the fuck did you…”

“ ’Cause, nigga, I love you, man. I missed you,” said Angel with tears in her eyes, so happy he was happy.

“Thank you, both y’all, man. Nobody’s ever did nothing like this for me, ever,” he said pulling her close and tight.

“Aww, man, this ain’t nothing but a jazzed-up jack move,” Craze complained as he watched the two get all sentimental.

“Shut up!” spat Angel.

“I don’t know who she think she be talkin’ to,” grumbled Craze with aggravation.

“So, is you gonna be out today or tomorrow?” Craze asked Dutch as Mr. Ramirez held out the key. Dutch took it and walked around
to the driver’s side, admiring his new whip. The panther-black paint reflected from the lights in the garage. The car sparkled
like it was covered in diamonds. Angel took the passenger seat as Dutch breathed in the new-leather interior smell. He backed
out of the garage and Angel waved good-bye to Mr. Ramirez. He drove slowly to where Craze was parked in the Prelude.

“Yo, Duke, I gotta few things to do. I’ll holla at you later, i-ight?” said Craze.

“I-ight,” said Dutch.

“Welcome home,” Craze said, pulling off with a smile and love for his man.

Dutch started his car and headed back around to Dayton Street with Angel riding shotgun. He pulled over on the side of the
street.

“I got something else for you, too. Stay here,” said Angel, climbing out of the car. Dutch watched her walk across the street
as she started hollering.

“Vita! Yo, Vita!
Ven aqui!
” Angel hollered up the block.

The young Dominican girl heard her name being called and turned around to see it was Angel and began waving. Her hair was
long, stretching down her back. She had on a skirt and a halter-top, revealing as much as could be revealed outside in the
streets.

“Vita, this is Dutch. Dutch, this is Vita,” she said, making an introduction.

“
Que pasa
, Poppi?” Vita asked as she leaned her fat ass against the frame of his BMW.

“Te gusta?”
Angel asked her.