The Coldest Winter Ever (3 page)

Santiaga picked up on my expression quickly and said, “Now you know I don’t run from no war. I’ll take on anybody who wants to bring it to me! But what I’m not having is nobody fucking with my ladies. If they want war, let it be man to man, and only the men.” It seemed like Santiaga knew something he wasn’t telling us. He was dead serious and I knew that his statements were coming from somewhere. “This place,” he added, holding up the picture, his finger pointing out the mansion, “this is a safe place. Man, wait till you see it. Shit, is laid out so nice it’s like heaven.”

The rules for our move out of Brooklyn were clear and nonnegotiable. Don’t talk about it. We knew no matter how silent we were, there would still be chatter. My mother’s brothers and sisters, and their husbands and boyfriends, who all worked for Poppa, would definitely have something to say. That didn’t matter, Santiaga said, “I’ll take care of everything. Just don’t add to it.”

In my last few days everything was moving like in a slow-motion film. Shit that stank, stank more. Anything sweet seemed even sweeter. I spent all my extra time with my girls. We were mad tight, many of us born and raised in this same spot. Take me and Natalie for instance, we did everything together. We even got our cherries busted together and lied to each other about how good the first time felt, when the truth was those big dicks ripped our tight little twelve-year-old tunnels apart. We fought over whose date was finer, even though Jamal and Jacob were twins! But I knew Jamal was
cuter’cause he had a fine black mole on his right cheek and that shit was sexy. Natalie said Jamal was the one who made my titties grow, ’cause after me and him started “getting down” I went from flat-chested to all eyes on me!

When my girl Toshi had beef with these chicks from around the corner, me, Nat, Zakia, Simone, Monique, Reese, all of us took off our jewels, greased up our faces, braided down our hair, and had our razors under our tongues ready to go to war. Before blows could be thrown or razors spitted out the big doofy girl from the other crew, who was s’pose to scare us, shouted out, “Yo, that’s Santiaga’s daughter. You crazy, I ain’t fucking with her.” Then the chicks we was supposed to be fighting started fighting each other ’cause some of them wanted to fight and some of them didn’t. So we started running toward them. We charged thoses bitches and they flew. We ran till we got tired and cracked up laughing at how stupid they were. I know one thing, they never fucked with Toshi again.

We blew trees together then got so hungry we ate four family-size bags of nacho cheese Doritos and watched our girl Asia, the only chubby one in our crew, throw up from the bellyache. Hell, we went from patent leather shoes at five-year-old birthday parties, to matching tomboy outfits and brawls, to fighting over whose titties were bigger.

Chanté, who was older than us, taught us all the sexual positions. She let us watch while she got down with boys when her mother was at work. She liked the idea of being our “teacher.” She even taught us how to suck a dick.

We had our first beef patties and coco bread, bun’n cheese and ginger beer together ’cause our girl Carmen was from Jamaica and used to take us to the spot where the dreds chilled out. She taught us how to dance like the Jamaican winders by moving our bodies slow and sexy like caterpillars. But none of us took fashion tips from her ’cause her gear was out of this world.

There wasn’t nothing that we hadn’t been through, including going to the funeral for Nique whose mother pushed her off the roof after she found out her man had been fucking her daughter. I was gonna miss BK, the music, the vibe, the hot dogs, and mostly the streets. It didn’t matter what no one said, Brooklyn is the shit, number one in my heart.

No one was supposed to know we were leaving. But on our last day
there, Natalie, who had a way of finding out all and any dirt on anybody, said to me out of the blue, “I’m tryna get my mother to get our long distance turned back on so I can make long-distance calls.” When we parted, she said, “Stay real, don’t switch up on us, bitch.”

We left in the evening. The whole thing was casual like we were going out to dinner or some shit like that. We didn’t take nothing with us ’cause Santiaga said we didn’t need it.

Oohs and aahs were the only sounds anybody could hear as my three little sisters were completely won over by the drive through the fancy big-money Long Island neighborhoods. As my dad’s Lexus zoomed up the winding tree-lined driveway, the clean snow dropped onto the car windows, adding to their amazement.

The way I figured it they were young so they were quick to betray Brooklyn. The huge doors to our new home looked more expensive than our entire old apartment. The warmth in the house invited us in, yet and still Santiaga lit the fireplace. More like a museum, there was enough space in this joint to fit seven or so families. It was so wide we could even park our cars indoors if we wanted. The floors were made of white marble, huge three foot by three foot squares, to hell with tiles and linoleum. Momma sprawled out on top of the white mink rug that Poppa had laid out in front of the fireplace. The way she sunk into that fur and the way her eyes were twice their normal size made me know we were here to stay. The icing for Momma was when Santiaga said, “It’s all for you to decorate any way that you like.”

For an entire month we went through catalogs and magazines, mail-ordered shit, and received deliveries that Santiaga arranged. Santiaga was so live that he had a guy who could make whatever he wanted to happen, happen. Designers, carpenters, locksmiths, tailors, you name it, they came when he called. They gave him respect, tried to keep their eyes from roaming around Santiaga’s home. You could see them shaken by Poppa’s power. Although I wanted to be in Brooklyn, I could see that this is the way a man like Santiaga is supposed to live. What we considered to be high quality before wasn’t nothing compared to now. But those slim corridors in the Brooklyn projects—where the smell of fried chicken collided with the smell of codfish and ackee, then got drowned out by the smell of liquor—still had my name on it.

The silence in the Long Island mansion was killing me. You couldn’t
just open the window, yell downstairs, and find out what’s jumping off later that night. The reality was that for the most part, in this area where we lived, nothing jumped off, period! The whole idea of next-door neighbors was dead. Forget borrowing a cup of sugar, a few cigarettes, or whatever. You’d have to walk what seemed like a mile just to get to the next house. Even then you wouldn’t be tryna borrow shit from them ’cause, hell, you don’t know them from jack and they don’t know you. Your ass is black, they old and white and the bottom line around these parts is you’re just expected to have your own shit and not borrow anything anyway. Now I don’t want to lie to you, there were some blacks in the neighborhood but they asses was so uptight. I figured if I asked them a question they’d want me to pay for the answer.

When I registered at the new school I knew that I would be spending even less time there than I had at my other school. There was just nothing live about it. Plus it’s bullshit moving anywhere when you’re already a teenager. By this time everybody is all paired off, grouped up, friendships cemented. You’ll look like an ass tryna link up with some-body’s clique when you don’t even know nobody in the whole circle. So I decided why fake it when it’s not even worth it.

Now every girl needs company. Trying to figure out how to meet a young nigga out here was like a fucking brainteaser. It wasn’t like people was walking outside on the streets like in Brooklyn. Here I could put on a Chanel suit, stand on the corner, and meet nothing but the wind and maybe even get a ticket for loitering. I had my driver’s license now but it didn’t matter. We had one car, the Lexus, and it was Santiaga’s. He promised Mom she was next in line to get her car. I was sure that after her car came mine, but who knew how long that was gonna take. Santiaga had to hook everything up just right so as not to bring too much attention on himself with too many big purchases.

After a while, me and my moms were going stir crazy. But we were the only ones disappointed. My little sister’s room was so big it was like a separate apartment. Even the twins were having a ball because they had plenty of space to tear up in. At the rate they were moving, we joked that our part-time housekeeper, a little Spanish woman named Magdalena, would be quitting any minute now.

“What good is all of this, baby, if I can’t show it off? I need my family to share in what you have given us.” Momma’s words were never ignored by Poppa. Once she lured him into the bedroom she would get what she wanted. Soon Santiaga agreed to allow Mommy to
throw regular Saturday night parties. Invitations were limited to carefully selected friends and family. Santiaga spared them no luxury. They ate like pigs, drank the liquor from our bar, and powdered their noses with the cane available in candy dishes usually reserved for jelly beans. They partied every weekend and stayed at our house so late that some of them were at our breakfast table on Sunday morning. These parties excited my mother and added the necessary spice to our new boring Long Island life. She got to show off her house, furniture, and all that good shit. If certain people were skeptical about giving us props before, they had to now ’cause our shit was official. Nobody from our neighborhood could lie and say that they had what we had. From the way their eyes popped open when they first came to the house, we could tell they had never been in nobody’s house that compared to ours.

These parties did nothing for me though. Point blank, I wasn’t invited. Even though I was sixteen, Santiaga couldn’t get it through his head that I was growing up. Inside I think he figured if he treated me like a little girl I’d remain one. Somehow he thought he treated me better than any man claiming to love me would. So, that should be enough for me. But it wasn’t enough.

So I learned to work around Santiaga’s ways. First I found the bus stop. That may sound simple but believe me it took real detective work. It was about a mile and a half from our house. I took the bus to the mall. That’s when I realized where everybody in Long Island is, at the mall! I cased the place just to see what stores they had up there. They passed my quality test. Coach store, yes, Versace yes, and of course Ralph Lauren, and Joan and David shoes. My heart rushed as I shopped. I spotted a few cuties, but not exactly my type of men. They had the blank sort of look in their face, not aggressive enough the way I liked ’em. Trust me, though, they didn’t have to look no particular way to eat my pussy, and right about now that’s exactly how I wanted to relieve my tension. So I sipped a chocolate malt, bought myself a designer T-shirt, hooked it up the way I wanted it, and smiled quietly to myself.

Saturday morning I prepared to fulfill my baby-sitting obligations. I dressed the twins in their matching Hilfiger jumpers and crisp new kicks. I did their hair up nice in some grown-up styles. I had on my tight brown suede pants. My brown suede jacket, brown leather shoes, and my Versace sunglasses. I put on my new custom-made designer T-shirt. I snatched up their little hands and headed to the
mall, where I was sure there would be something exciting for each of us to get into.

By the end of the day, the twins had managed to rearrange their hairdos and decorate their jumpers with spilled hot cocoa. I could not believe that I didn’t meet the man I pictured so carefully in my mind, my tension-reliever. Instead I was approached by one guy who walked up to me with his doofy ass asking me about my T-shirt. I rolled my eyes and made a face at him like he smelled like shit or something. He got the point and strolled away. Later on, going home on the bus I thought maybe the guys around here are not used to bold women like me. Maybe they were into manners, prissy bitches, and shit like that. Maybe my T-shirt, which read
THESE ARE NOT MY FUCKING KIDS
!, was too spicy for their precious eyes and ears. There was no doubt in my mind that I would have to find my way back to Brooklyn on a regular basis to keep my sanity.

“Daddy,” I said softly, trying to lean on my innocent baby doll look.

“I want to get my hair done at Earline’s next Friday.”

Sensing some type of plot, Santiaga asked, “Why would you go all the way to Brooklyn to get your hair done? Can’t you go somewhere around here?”

“Come on, Daddy,” I pleaded. “They don’t know how to hook my ’do up out here. Earline be having my shit—excuse me, my hair looking correct!”

“There’s plenty of black hairdressers out here. Go to Wyandanch. That’s a forty-five minute ride. It just doesn’t make sense for my baby to be riding a bunch of trains and buses just to get to Brooklyn.”

“Bus! Train! Trust me Daddy, I wasn’t talking ’bout riding either. I’m straight up hitting on you for a ride when you drive in on Friday,” I said, laughing and begging at the same time.

“Winter, you know I don’t mix business and pleasure. I do my runs solo. I don’t want you to deal with that or knowing more than what you need to know. It’s not smart. And I never been a stupid man. Just lay low for awhile. Your mother will have her car in a couple of weeks. Then you and her can go ripping around to take care of all that girly shit.

“Anyway,” he said, with his cool face and half a smile, “there ain’t a female in the state who looks better than Winter even without Earline’s help.” Even in my disappointed moment a compliment felt good, and worked, as it did every time. I accepted Santiaga’s rationale and went back to my room to reshuffle my deck and think of another angle to get me into Brooklyn.

Days later I called Sterling, my old sugar daddy, out of the blue. After racking my brain for a plan to get into Brooklyn I realized he was the only sucker I knew who would get such a kick out of seeing me that he would drive all the way out here to get me. The price of the
whole arrangement was that I’d have to tolerate him, act like I gave a damn about him when I didn’t. I’d have to think of quick answers to all his wimpy bitching questions about where I had been, why I cut out on him like I did, why I never called and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then I’d have to find a clever way to ditch him ’cause I definitely wasn’t spending my Friday night with him. I’d have to be firm so he wouldn’t start that damn whining. I’d also have to be sweet so if I had to use him again as my taxi driver from time to time, he would cooperate. The worst thing that might happen is I might have to end up giving him some pussy just to keep him in line or a quick blow job while he was driving. I wasn’t sweating it, though. I had done it with him before and I could easily do it again, especially to get the hell out of Long Island.