Of Hustle and Heart (15 page)

CHAPTER 26

ZACARIAS

T
he two have settled. My mother has accepted that Whitney is having my child, and for this reason, she has called a truce. It is a relief to have them in a room together with no fighting, but it’s still upsetting since John is ever so vocal about my need for a paternity test.

“She’s goddamn crazy. You don’t know when she’ll go off on one of her episodes,” he says.

“What episodes, John?”

“Like when she tried to fuckin’ fight me.”

“C’mon, she’s the mother of your niece or nephew.”

“She
might
be the mother of one of my nieces or nephews.”

“John! Stop. This is happening.”

“Bro, I love you more than anything, I swear to you, but I don’t trust this conniving slut—”

“Watch it,” I warn him.

He takes a step back out of respect. “I don’t trust her. At all. And I got a bad feeling.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little overdramatic?”

“Maybe. But I’m serious. Get a blood test.” He pauses, considering whether or not he should continue. “Francisco agrees with me.”

He looks away from me and stares out into the evening air. “And so does Dad,” he says, cutting his eyes toward me.

“What?”

“He thinks you’re being naive. He’s not going to say anything until the baby comes, but I think it’s stupid to wait.”

“Dad said I should get a blood test done?” For the first time since John started his rant, I’m actually listening.

My father’s the one. His voice matters. His opinion trumps that of my mother. My father has doubts. Perfect. As if my pending unhappiness isn’t enough.

Whitney is asleep. My birthday and engagement is four days away. And Zina will turn eighteen seven days after I turn twenty-five. I wish her much more happiness than I have right now. I invited her to the party a few days after I found out about the baby and before it became an engagement celebration. I was unsure of things, and talking to her that day when she came into the restaurant alone made me forget about who I was. Instead, I felt like the person I was meant to be. She told me about her brothers, reluctantly, but still. She opened up to me. She said she chose our friendship. But I know now this is untrue. Most relationships happen to us. We don’t choose them.

Whitney is still my pretty girlfriend, smiling in her sleep, her hair loose all over my pillows. She seems happier lately than I’ve ever seen her. That makes one of us. I sit shirtless, my hair a curly sleepless mess, in the chair that I keep at the foot of my bed. On nights when I can’t sleep, I read classic literature. William Faulkner is my favorite. But tonight I can’t focus. My spirit is restless.

I leave the room after I watch her sleep, for a while. I end up outside on the balcony. John isn’t home; he stays away more and more since Whitney and I are here most of the time. My mind travels, drifting from person to person and place to place. I think about my brothers and wonder how they’d deal with this sort of thing. I try to imagine my mother and Whitney together with the baby, enjoying themselves and each other. This vision brings a smile, but it is short-lived; I realize it’s my imagination that is responsible for such a truce between the two. I picture myself with my son or daughter, and this time the smile is real, because no matter what is going on with anyone else in the world, I will always be a father to this child. Tears pool in my eyes at the thought of it. I am happy beyond words about becoming a father—to be so blessed, to have this honor, to follow in my own dad’s footsteps. The idea of being a father is enough for me. It will carry this relationship. I will not get a blood test done.

CHAPTER 27

ZINA

W
e close the laundry room door and sit on the floor, staring at the bricks of weed. There looks to be about four pounds of it, and it smells like good quality.

“Should we leave it?” I ask Blanca.

She doesn’t reply at first. Then she picks up one of the bricks. “This is some heavy-ass weed,” she says as she stacks two bricks on top of each other.

“I’ll be right back,” I say. “I’m gonna get a knife.”

Blanca stares at me. “A knife for what?”

I scramble to my feet. “So I can cut this shit open. You see any swishers in there?”

She walks over to the safe and peers inside. “This one is labeled,” she says. She picks up the front pound and sits it on the floor. “Motorcycle Whip,” she reads out loud.

“Are they all labeled?” I ask.

“Yep, this one says Beauty.” She looks inside the safe and reads off the names of each strain. “Organic Purple Kush, and Head.”

“Fuck.”

“I say we sell it,” Blanca says all of a sudden.

“Huh?” I raise my eyebrows. “Sell what?”

She cocks her head. I frown. “Duh.”

“To whom?” I ask.

“To the kids at school.”

“Nigga, we can’t do that!” I laugh. “Sell drugs at school? You gave me so much shit for selling CDs at school.”

“Zina, selling CDs was a waste of time. That shit is for poor people.”

“Wait—what tha fuck. Did you really just say that?”

“Well, it is. Fuck that shit. This,” she points to the pound of Beauty, “is what we need.”

“We?”

She quiets down. “I won’t let you do this alone.” She sits down in front of the safe. “Nobody’s going to tell,” she says, slowly stretching her legs and kicking over one of the bricks. “Everybody likes to get high, especially kids. If we bring this dope to them,” she gestures toward the potential goldmine, “all they’re gonna do is buy it. Besides, we won’t sell to everyone, just certain people.”

I sit back down on the floor and listen to her plan. “So it’ll be like a club,” I say, trying to justify it to myself. “And we’d only sell to people we trust, so only certain people will know.”

She nods. “Mmm hmm.”

“I don’t know, man. I mean, I’m hood and all, but I don’t know how to sell no fuckin’ dope!” I point at her. “And you definitely don’t.”

Blanca laughs. “That’s what Google is for.” She pulls out her phone and starts searching.

“What are you doing?” I ask. “Really, Blanca? Google? You ’bout to Google how to sell dope?” I throw up a hand. “Looking for
Dope Dealing for Dummies
on Amazon and shit?”

I raise myself up on my knees and peer at her smartphone.

“I’ll Google what we need,” she says. “You know—like bags. Usually when people buy weed, it comes in those little plastic bags.”

“You trippin’, girl.”

But the idea of extra money—quick and easy money—is appealing enough for me to consider it. And after I sit there long enough, poking a hole in one of the bricks with my finger, I can already see the money. I can see our rent being paid up for a good two months and the lights never being cut off again.

We stay in the laundry room for a good while. I examine Uncle Tony’s guns, while Blanca back-orders episodes of
Breaking Bad
and my request of
The
Godfather,
from Netflix.

“If we’re going to do this, I need to learn from the best,” she says.

“You cannot be serious,” I say.

“I’m dead serious.”

As Bee researches the Mafia and the potency of the strains of marijuana we found, I stretch out on the floor, sandwiched between our product and Uncle Tony’s guns. I watch my best friend take notes in her
Vera Bradley
notebook on how to weigh and measure bud.

“I’m glad you’re doing all the homework,” I whisper. She smiles. “How much you think we can get for it?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I don’t know for sure,” she says, her nose deep into her phone screen and her notebook. “But looking at what I think we got and how we can break it down and price it…” She smiles again. “A lot! Way more than what you need for y’all’s lights and water bills,” she says. “And you can have my cut too. I just want to shop a little bit.”

“You don’t want to save any of the money?” I ask.

“I’ll save next time around.”

I’m motivated. The kind of motivation you get when you know some big shit is about to pop off.

This will work…

“You know, we could use Rachel.” I look up at Blanca. “Freak, yeah!” She grins from ear to ear as she pumps her fist in the air. “Rachel would be freakin’ awesome. Perfect and popular.”

Uncle Tony came back days after Blanca and I had already moved three of the bricks we’d found in the safe. It took us close to a week to sell it all. Once Rachel did her thing and word got out, we were the girls serving all the parties—not just for our school but for three other high schools in Houston, two on the southwest and one on the north. The money came in quick, and my hands did not stop itching. Within the first three days, I made enough money to get our lights restored. Afterward, I focused on the water bill and getting myself a car. Corey’s sister took me to get it. As long as I had the money, she was cool about taking me to meet a guy who works at Southside Auto. She signed the papers that needed an adult to sign and told me that I had to go get my license before the end of the week. I cut school that Wednesday and took my driver’s test. Now I’m just waiting for my license to come in the mail. I have bags and plenty of pot left—sticky, fluffy, uncompressed dope, with so many fucking red hairs in it that we got blowed one night and named the stuff Jessica Rabbit. I keep dealing because it’s working for me. And with Blanca and Rachel with me in this, I know it’ll be just fine.

On the day Uncle Tony arrives from México, I am freaking the hell out. I can’t focus at school, and I text Blanca at every chance I get. She tells me not to worry, but I know he’s going to be so pissed off when he discovers what we’ve done.

When I knock on his door, he opens it, snatches me by the arm, and yanks me inside. Slamming the door behind me, he locks it before forcefully turning me loose. I stumble through the foyer as he turns on me.

“Did you take something from me?” he asks.

I’m terrified, so terrified I start weeping hysterically.
Good job, Zina. Way to keep your cool
.

He takes my reaction as a yes. “I can’t…I can’t…Why would you do that? What were you thinking?”

“It was just a little weed.”

“Get your stuff!” he says, pretending he doesn’t hear me.

“But—”

“No buts,” he snaps. “Get everything. I don’t want you coming back.” I stand there, sobbing. “This is not good, Zina, and you don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

I don’t want to leave. Not like this. I am ready to beg for his forgiveness, though I don’t know how. I thought if I apologized and admitted what we did, it would be okay. It isn’t. He tells me to call Blanca to take me home.

“I’m serious, Zina! Get all of it. You better not leave one thing.”

My cries soften as he stands over me while I gather my things from the floor of his closet. He watches me, breathing heavy.

When he’s satisfied that I’ve gathered everything, he turns and brushes past me, yanking me and my bag from the floor. He shoves me through the bedroom door and slams it behind me. I am too uncomfortable to sit down anywhere, so I just prop against the arm of the sofa and wait for Bee.

Fifteen minutes later, Tony comes out of his room and stands in the doorway. His voice is gravelly.

“Text Blanca and tell her to call you when she gets here. I don’t want her ass in here either. She was with you in this?”

I look up, my face sticky and distorted from emotion and weeping. I try to clear the lump from my throat, but my voice comes out dry and brittle.

“Okay,” I say. My head throbs as I nod in reply, and I lower it, afraid to look at him. Then the fear transforms into something else, something more familiar. I can’t do it. He had his say, yelling and cussing at me. Fine! I deserved that. But I can’t be this person. I can’t let him treat me like I’m shit. Suddenly I’m as mad as he is.

“Why are you being so mean?” I ask. It’s my turn to scowl at him, and I’m ready to fight. Yeah, I was wrong, but I’m not weak. “My
bad
,” I say with extra salt. “We were
wrong
.”

He looks at me stone-faced, but his eye twinkle with amusement.

“I need the money, you know that,” I say. “I’m not a stranger,” I say, placing a hand over my chest, my voice cracking, because—truth time—no matter how mad we are at each other, it hurts like hell to see Tony looking at me as if he can’t stand the sight of me.

“I didn’t steal from you. I took what I needed so I could do what I had to do.” I pause, as my emotions threaten to get the better of me. I gather myself. “I know you’d have done the same thing. I’m no thief, and you ain’t no fuckin’ hypocrite.”

He listens, though I can’t tell whether he gives a fuck about what I say. I can’t take the suspense, so I look away. When I glance from beneath my eyelashes, I see him trembling.
Whoa
. I move closer to the door. We were stupid. What the hell did we think he’d do?

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. It’s my final plea. “You have to forgive us. Blanca’s your niece, and I’m…”

“You’re not my niece,” he says. He’d been staring off in the distance, but the sound of my broken voice catches his attention. He whips his head around and frowns at me. “You’re something else,” he whispers. “I don’t want to yell at you. So why the fuck are you making me do it?”

I wipe my nose with the back of my hand. “I’m not making you.”

He runs both hands through his hair and rubs his head. “You need to go,” he says, and I burst into quiet sobs again.

“Tony, come on.” I look up at him. It takes all the strength I have to look him in the eye. “Please.”

His face softens at the sight of mine. I can’t imagine what I must look like—a tired, wet puppy maybe. I take a deep breath, and my body trembles a little. His brow wrinkles, and he looks confused, as if he doesn’t know what to do or say. Then he shakes his head, folds his arms over his chest, and looks away again. He opens his mouth to say something but then changes his mind. Without another word, he heads back into his bedroom and shuts the door again.

I bury my face in my hands and cry some more.

“What happened to ‘what’s mine is yours’ and all that?” I yell at him through the walls. Seconds later, his door swings open.

“Don’t pull that shit, Zina,” he says, standing in his doorway. He suddenly falls into father mode. “There is no way for me to believe you didn’t know you were stealing from me.” His voice is dry and broken with sentiment. “You knew. What did you think would happen?”

“I didn’t…”

“You didn’t what?”

“I wouldn’t steal from you.”

“How can you say that when you already have?”

“I’m not a thief!”

“Good-bye, Zina. Let yourself out.”

His final words pierce my heart as he closes the bedroom door behind him.