Street Divas (5 page)

The boys shake their heads.

“Jealousy don't look good on you,” Bishop says.

“But you wear stupid well.” I turn my back just as my cell phone starts ringing. Glancing down at the screen, I recognize Mason's home number. “It's about damn time. We've been blowing up your phone.”

“Fuck! I don't have my phone. Shit.” He groans. “I left it at that bitch's crib.” He swears for a few more seconds. “You'd never fuckin' believe who that bitch has been smashing on the sidelines.”

“Look. As much as I'd like to pretend that I'm interested in your bullshit relationships, I'd rather you hurry up and get your ass down to the Med. Profit has been shot.”

“WHAT?” he thunders. “I thought he was going—”

“His limo got jacked. Bishop and his crew found him out off O'Donnell's.” I lower my voice to inject sympathy. “It's bad, Mason. He's been pumped with a lot of muthafuckin' bullets.”

There was a beat of silence. “Is he . . . ?”

“He was still alive when he got here. He's in surgery right now, but I ain't going to lie to you. It ain't looking too good.”

“See you in a sec.”

“F
UCK! FUCK! FUCK!” I reach out and grab a curling iron from off the bathroom counter and hurl that muthafucka toward the vanity mirror. I don't even flinch when the bitch explodes into a million pieces. In the hallway, that pissy son of a bitch starts screaming and hollering, and it takes everything that's in me not to march back out there and give his ass something to really cry about.

“LeShelle, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

I ignore Python's ass as I stomp on broken glass in order to get over to the window. Sure enough, Ta'Shara's ass ain't nowhere in sight.
“Shit!”

“LESHELLE!”

I turn around and storm out of the bathroom. The first muthafucka I see is that child hollering and snotting in the hallway. “Will you
please
shut the fuck up?”

“LESHELLE,” Python thunders, limping into the hallway.

“What?” I shrug. “I fuckin' said
please.
”

Python's eyes narrow as he grinds his teeth together.

I toss up my hands. “Fine. You deal with him. He's your kid. I have my own problems.” Jerking away from his lil crybaby, I squeeze past Python to get out of the fuckin' hallway.

“And where the fuck do you think you're going?”

“I got some personal business I got to handle.”

Python's face twists like I spat in his face. “Business? Bitch, what about me? I'm fuckin' bleeding all over the place.”

“Then call your damn aunt Peaches over here to take care of it. I got shit to do, and that brat is really working the fuck out of my nerves right now.” I try to snatch away my hand, but before I know it, Python's large hand locks around my throat and slams my head into the wall.

“Your mouth is out of fuckin' control!” His forked tongue slithers across his thick lips before he slams my ass again. “Do I look like some four-corner nigga who you can pop off to? Huh?”

Slam!

“I done capped one bitch tonight who thought she could play me stupid. You're welcome to join her ass in hell as far as I'm concerned. Now say something else slick.”

Slam!

“Go ahead. I fuckin' dare you!”

Fuck.
The way this nigga is squeezing my throat, I can't say shit. Plus, I think he has cracked the back of my head open. But if I'm not mistaken that loud-ass screaming has stopped. After the stars disappear before my eyes, I glare back into Python's black gaze, but I keep my muthafuckin' mouth shut. I'm not sure how long I'm pinned to the wall, but it feels like a long muthafuckin' time. While we're blowing invisible steam at each other, I realize that I do need to check myself. What's the point of making the moves I'm making just to lose Python to the next bitch he undoubtedly has on standby?

Python releases me and I slide down the wall and away from the big-ass dent my head made into the muthafucka. At my first gulp of oxygen, I start choking and hacking.

“Now fuckin' apologize,” he barks.

“What?”

Python's open hand slams across my face, and I fleetingly think his ass gave me whiplash.

“I SAID FUCKIN' APOLOGIZE!”

Before his ass can hit me again, I throw up my hands as a sign of surrender. “I'm sorry,” I manage to get out of a numb and bleeding tongue and aching windpipe. But when my gaze finds his again, I'm sure that he can still see anger in my eyes. His hand comes up again and I flinch.

“DON'T. TRY. ME.”

Another standoff ensues, and luckily for my ass, his whiny whoreson starts sniffling. Python steps back but then starts ordering my ass around. “Take care of Lil Man. I'll take care of this plug my damn self.” He turns and then storms into the bathroom. I hear him ask, “What the fuck happened in this muthafucka?” before he slams the door behind him.

I can't resist the urge of shooting my middle fingers at the closed door. I'm so sick of his ass always thinking that he's the only one with problems. I better find Ta'Shara and make sure she don't start blabbing to the po-po about her dead nigga. Then again, I know her ass ain't stupid enough to snitch. If she thinks my ass was ruthless earlier, she ain't seen nothing yet.

Sniff.

I jerk my head around, and once again, I'm staring at this ugly-ass kid. “C'mon here,” I snap, turning toward one of the guest bedrooms. It's not really a guest bedroom since Python and I aren't exactly the type of people to be hosting niggas. The blue-painted room is more like a miscellaneous room, where Python stashes all his old workout equipment. There's an old treadmill with a mountain of clothes piled all over it. There's a stationary bike with the same problem and everything else that his aunt Peaches buys in the middle of the night from the Home Shopping Network and gives our asses. Basically, it's a room full of junk.

But there is an old bed in here as well—a twin bed that is as comfortable as sleeping on a pile of bricks, but that shit ain't my problem. “You can sleep in here,” I tell him. “Just for the night—because I promise you that this shit ain't no permanent thing. I don't raise other bitches' bastards.” I stare the kid down to make sure he gets my meaning, but then he blinks his big watery gaze up at me and I feel something tug in my chest.
Didn't some old bitch tell me and Ta'Shara that once when we moved in with them?

An image of a woman with her nose in the air and a nasty, crooked-ass wig flashes in my memory. Yeah. It was the same bitch who fed us only one bowl of rice a day the entire three months we were there. It wasn't like we could steal shit either, because the evil woman kept food locked in a pantry and then kept the key tucked down in between her breasts. God, I hated that bitch.

I draw a deep breath and then shake off the memory. “Did you at least bring some clean clothes with you?” I ask, softening my voice.

He shakes his big, bowling ball–sized head while his bottom lip trembles.

“Fine.” I huff out a long breath. “Take off your clothes and I'll go find something for you to wear.” Now, just because I'm not snapping at his ass doesn't mean that I'm less annoyed. It's hard to get around feeling this goddamn disrespected.

I leave the kid alone and head to the master bedroom. Once there, I can't stop mumbling, “Fuck this bullshit” while I rummage around for something, anything, that would fit the child. Ten minutes later, I settle on one of Python's black T-shirts. Shit. At least the kid won't be naked. But when I walk back into the hall, I step in the kid's puddle of piss, and my blood pressure shoots right back up. I swear to God I don't see shit but red. “Guess I'm supposed to mop after this muthafucka, too,” I snap at the closed door.

“Goddamn it, LeShelle. Shut the fuck up!” he shouts.

I roll my eyes. “Ain't this about a bitch?” I stomp into the blue room while still rolling my eyes.

“Put this shit on.” I toss the shirt to the kid and then go back to the bathroom and knock.

Folding my arms, I shift my weight from side to side, waiting for Python to open the door.

“Yeah? What do you want?”

Are you fuckin' kidding me?
“We need to talk.”

There's a long pause and then, “C'mon in.”

Still struggling to hold my temper in check, I reach for the knob and open the door.

Python is standing over the sink and picking at the hole at his side and bleeding freely all over the place. My concern for this nigga kicks in, and I toss all the other miscellaneous bullshit aside and move up next to him. “Stop. Let me take a look at it.”

He glances down at me. “Oh.
Now
your ass is fucking concerned?”

“Shut up and move your hand.” I lean in close and examine the wound. “The bullet is still in there.”

“No shit.”

I give him an irritated look. “You want me to help you or not?”

“Something tells me that you've been looking forward to paying me back for when I took the slug out of your arm a while back.”

“They say karma is a bitch.” I cheese up at him.

A smile hooks one side of his mouth. “A'ight. But make this shit quick because it's hurting like a son of a bitch.”

“I can get it out, but because of the shape of this one, you might want to go with stitches instead of sealing it up with a hot knife.”

“You know how to do that?”

“I can try—or we can probably wake up Momma Peaches to handle it.”

“This time of night?”

“Please. You know her ass would do it for her favorite nephew.” I wink at him, but his good humor has already faded from his face.

“Naw,” he mumbles. “I don't need to bother her with this shit. Just do what you can.”

I frown. Surely my smart-ass remark didn't have him thinking about his long-lost brother, Mason. The old-timers roaming around Shotgun Row told me plenty of times about how Python's cracked-out mother may have sold Python's baby brother for drugs. It's fucked up, but it's hardly a unique story around Memphis. This city is filled to the brim with a lot of trifling women who had no damn business spitting out babies—and I put my own momma in that same category. I've seen my fair share of bullshit around here with these strung-out bitches. If they don't toss it up themselves, they don't think twice about selling their kids wholesale. And trust and believe that you can't beat their asses sobbing and acting a fool in front of the news cameras when they report the children missing.

Getting that next hit is the only thing that matters to a crackhead. Only, let Momma Peaches tell it, the loss of his little brother really affected Python. To this day, he has never been able to forgive his mother.

Python resumes picking at the bleeding bullet hole.

I smack his hand away. “Stop it. You don't want to get an infection, do you?”

“Well, fuck. Get the molasses out your ass and handle this shit.”

Ungrateful bastard.
For the next thirty minutes, I concentrate on getting this bullet out of Python while waiting for him to tell me what happened. When I work the bullet out, we're both covered with blood.

“Let me see that son of a bitch,” Python says.

I hand him the bloody bullet and then turn to get the alcohol and peroxide from beneath the bathroom counter.

“Soooo . . . do you wanna tell me what the fuck happened in here?” Python asks.

It's not like us to be tiptoeing around shit. I know that he's a real dog and that I'm the one kept on a short chain. But when niggas have a night like we clearly had, it's time to come correct.

“I did what you asked,” I say flatly.

“Which is?”

I drench a hand towel with alcohol and start cleaning around his open wound. I know the shit has to sting, but Python doesn't flinch. It's small shit like this that gets my chest to swell with pride.

“Are you going to make me wait all night?”

“I took care of that situation between Ta'Shara and that Vice Lord muthafucka she was seeing.”

His lips turn down as he rolls his eyes. “Yeah, right. Did she tell you that shit herself? You know bitches are some sneaky-ass muthafuckas. You need to bring her ass into the fold. Make her ass a Queen G.”

“Done and done.”

His black gaze finds mine again.

I smile. “I took a few niggas down by the school, and we jacked Ta'Shara and her nigga's shit after they left the prom.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.” I lean forward and plant a kiss on his thick lips. “I told you I'd handle it. Now it's done.”

“Gangsta bitch.” He slaps me on the ass.

“I did what needed to be done. Kind of like how you had to take care of your cousin Datwon.”

Python cocked his large head. “What? You killed her?”

“Nah. I couldn't do that shit—but I earthed that grimy Vice Lord she'd been fuckin'.” I cocked my hand like a pistol and placed the shit in the center of his chest. “Pow!”

Python's eyes lit up. “You're fuckin' shitting me. You capped Fat Ace's brother?”

“Fuck yeah. Dumped a full clip into that muthafucka! Lights out!” I laugh, remembering how good it felt to squeeze the trigger. My clit was thumping the whole time. Though it was eerie how that nigga remained on his feet like some black superhero. But his ass fell—and that's all that matters.

Python grabs hold of my face. “Goddamn. I fucking love your ass. You know that shit? You took that nigga's brother out! Fuck yeah!” He pulls me up against him and lays a kiss on me that steals my breath away. I melt against him and stretch my arms around his neck. Shit. Had I known I would've gotten this sort of reaction, I would have capped that young gun a long time ago.

“Oh.” I push him back. “Your side. We need to get you stitched up. After that, we can finish this celebration in the bedroom.”

Python flicks his forked tongue at me. “I wouldn't mind getting a little bit of that sweet ass,
Mrs. Carver.
”

My heart jumps. “What did you say?”

He reaches up and pinches me on my titties. “You heard me, Mrs. LeShelle Carver.”

I scream and throw my arms around his neck.

“Ow. Fuck. Now that shit hurts.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.” I proceed to rain kisses all over his face. I can't believe it. I'm finally going to go from wifey to wife.