Yaccub's Curse (4 page)

“You said you wanted a pregnant one right?” Yellow Dog asked with his eyes still hunting through the parade of drug ravaged flesh.

“Yeah, one that’s just about to pop.” Scratch replied. His eyes radiated more hatred than lust, but Yellow Dog seemed oblivious.

“That’s some sick shit, bro. But I know a lot of guys who like them knocked up whores. They say the pussy’s wetter and their titties are all fat and swollen. I knew a cat who liked to drink milk from them pregnant bitches’ titties. He said it tasted like cream. He got his girl knocked up and tried to drink that bitch dry. After the baby was born he would be nursing right alongside the little rugrat.”

“That’s not what I want the bitch for.” Scratch replied with his blue eyes still spitting icy flame and Yellow Dog fell silent.

“Hey, there’s a pregnant bitch right there but I don’t think she’s a whore though.”

“Is she buyin’ crack?”

“Yeah, I think she is.”

“Then she’s a fuckin’ whore! Go scoop her ass up.”

“Yeah, but I’ve seen that chick walking around with her head all wrapped up. I think she’s a Muslim or some shit.”

Scratch smiled wide so that his gold plated smile caught moonlight and beamed it back.

“Even better. Go get that bitch.”

Yellow Dog wasn’t really down with raping a Muslim woman, but he was even less enamored of the idea of having his head blown off by his murderous employer for disobeying orders. Scratch pulled to the curb and Yellow Dog slipped from the car. He hit the sidewalk right beside the Muslim woman and whispered into her ear.

“Aren’t you with the Nation, sister? What you doin’ up here buyin’ crack?”

Startled, the woman whirled around and found herself staring into the sleepy-eyed leer of the mulatto gangsta who grinned at her like he’d caught her with a dick in her mouth. She looked at him and then quickly dropped her eyes to her feet.

“I-I-I have a problem.” She stammered as she tried to walk around him and avoid his accusatory eyes.

“Well, then let me help you, sista.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know that it wouldn’t do for anyone else to see you up here on the Ave. Why don’t you hop in my ride and let me get you out of here. Then I’ll get you fixed up proper.” Yellow Dog opened his hand to reveal the four vials of crack rolling around in his palm and her eyes were instantly drawn to them. She didn’t hear a word he said after that. Nothing else mattered. She would have followed him anywhere for the promise of the pipe. Her addiction was strong. Obviously Allah had not been enough to tame it.

Yellow Dog walked with her to the Beemer and opened the passenger door with a flourish. When she looked in and saw Scratch behind the wheel she turned to Yellow Dog with rage and disgust twisting her face into a vicious snarl.

“You didn’t say anything about riding with no devils!”

“All White people aren’t devils, young lady…” Scratch pulled his big shiny nickel plated .45 and pointed it right at the woman’s belly. His eyes gleamed with a feral lust that ignited the icy irises like lanterns. “…Just me. Now get the fuck in this car and let me show you some of this here tricknology.”

He grinned wider as Yellow Dog covered her mouth to prevent her from screaming and shoved her into the car.

“Allow me to introduce myself, sista. My name is Scratch and I’m the trickster your minister warned you about.”

— | — | —

Chapter 3

“Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victim he intends to eat until he eats them.”

—Samuel Butler

««—»»

After living in that neighborhood for several months and mostly playing by myself I somehow managed to make friends with a few kids. Nikky and his big brother Warlock were my first real road dogs in the neighborhood. Warlock was a sixteen year-old drug dealer, graffiti artist, and wannabe pimp. He wore Cross Colors sweat suits, and gold chains so thick they looked like slave restraints. His hair was cut into a gravity-defying block taper that stuck up more than a foot from his head.

Warlock was a lethal looking street snake with eyes that were perpetually narrowed in suspicion and yellowed from blunt smoke. He was skinny as a rail and knee-high to a sewer rat, but he was known to be quick as death with a switchblade. With a knife in his hand Warlock would take on men twice his size. He was like a magician whose stainless steel prestidigitation could leave a brother cut from his ass crack to his nut sack in the silence between heartbeats. Warlock had much respect around the way. His brother Nikky was comparatively square.

Nikky was a shy kid who spent all his time drawing, daydreaming, reading comic books, and writing graffiti. Still, he got respect for his lyrical skills. Nikky was an aspiring hip-hop artist who could spin rhymes off the top of his head without missing a beat even though he often stuttered just trying to say hello.

He never wrote any of his rhymes down, but I suspected that during the long minutes he spent daydreaming he was really composing the complex lyrics that were his trademark. He could hold an entire crowd of teenagers enthralled as he stood on the corner spittin’ his gift like a ghetto griot, telling the stories of our lives.

Nikky was thicker than his brother and average height for an eight year-old. His hair was cut conservatively short with rippling waves and tapered on the sides. Both he and his brother were the color of polished oak but where Nikky’s skin was smooth and unblemished, Warlock’s face was a minefield of scars and pock marks and his teeth were covered with braces that looked like a mouthful of barbed wire. Somehow Warlock managed to make that metallic grin look cool. I even asked my mother if I could get braces just to look like him. Unfortunately my teeth were completely straight.

The day I first met the two brothers they were propped up against Warlock’s powder blue 1988 Lincoln Continental blasting Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power” as loud as his over-priced stereo system could crank and arguing with another kid Warlock’s age about who could rap better him or Nikky. Warlock was pimpin’ a pair of baggy Turkish pants in that MC Hammer style and an oversized polka dot dress shirt. He wore a furry red Kangol cap on his head and snake skin Stacey Adams. Nikky was dressed more conservatively in a pair of baggy Jive pants that hung low on his hips so that his red and white polka dot Calvin Klein boxers were visible and a T-shirt his brother had airbrushed in wild style graffiti letters that spelled out G-town. I stared at their clothing practically drooling with envy. If it wasn’t for the fact that Nikky looked so self-conscious and uncomfortable in his clothes I would have hated him instantly. I hated anyone rich and anyone coming on my block wearing a pair of $60 Jive jeans while I wore my $19.99 J.C. Penny’s Tough Skins would have been a hated enemy. But there was something about this kid. Even Warlock still looked like a street kid who’d found his fairy godmother and had been blessed for a time with princely garb. There was a fear in his eyes, just below the surface, that all of this wouldn’t last. That tomorrow the car, the stereo, the clothes might all be gone and he’d be right back in the projects choking on filth.

The kid that stood between them was an obvious hanger on. One of those who believed coolness could be passed through osmosis. He wore a greasy do-rag beneath which his naps were baking in an S-curl pomade. His fake Gucci sweatshirt was stained with the stuff. His name was Devin but he preferred to be called “Divinity”. When I walked up they had just started to battle.

“Well, who’s gonna judge this thing? It can’t be you. You’re his brother. Of course you’re gonna say he won.”

Warlock looked around and spotted me kicking a rock across the street looking bored and pretending not to be listening to their conversation.

“Yo! Kid! Come here for a sec!”

I walked over, fighting to keep the grin off my face.

“What’s up, dog?”

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Malik.”

“Well, my name is Warlock. This is my brother Nikky, and this fool here is Devin.”

“Divinity,” he interrupted offering his hand, which I shook without taking my eyes off Warlock.

“Whatever. Anyway, we’re about to have a little battle right here and we want you to be our unbiased judge.”

“I really don’t know that much about rap.”

“You know what you like and what you don’t. That’s good enough.”

“Alright, Devin, you go first.”

“Ay little homie. Can you do a beat box?”

“A what?”

“Nigga stop stallin’ and start flowin’!” Warlock growled.

Warlock started off with some old school tongue twister shit that sounded like a rip-off of Kangol from U.T.F.O. mixed with 2 Live Crew.

“Well, I’m Divinity—In the place to be—I put the girls in ecstasy—every time they see me—rip the microphone like a pair of lace panties—make the girlies scream like I’m all up in their pussy…”

His rap went on and on with that typical B-boy macho misogynistic bravado. Some of it was pretty funny, but none of it was very good. Then Nikky began to flow and what was coming out of his mouth was like nothing I’d ever heard. He was kicking straight poetry.

“Look long and hard—see the heavens scarred—by the impotent tears of a race torn apart— by a prejudice world and our misguided rage—attacking the puppets on a cardboard stage—Now we’re stuck in the gloom of our ghetto tomb—and even love to us is just the herald of doom—Who can I trust in this world of fear? What is beauty to the eyes that shed no tears?”

“Yeah, muthafucka! That’s what I’m talkin’ about, nigga!”

This was the type of genius black folks never got credit for. This kid was probably failing English class yet he could write rhymes with themes, imagery, and rhythms more complex and profound than 99% of the garbage they were teaching us in school. Walt Whitman could kiss my black ass! This was true poetry!

“Man, that wasn’t no rap! I-I don’t know what the fuck that was!” Devin thought for a second and then shook Nikky’s hand, “Yo, but that shit was dope, bro. You gots mad skills!”

“Yo, homes that was the freshest shit I ever heard!”

Yeah, I said fresh. That was like ’93. You could still say fresh in ’93. Couldn’t you?

“Fresh?”

“Aaaaaahahahaha! That fool said the shit was fresh! Naw, bro. It’s dope! It’s butta! It’s ill! It’s sick! But fresh went out with the eighties, son!” Warlock draped an arm around my shoulder still laughing so hard that tears were squeezing out of the corners of his bloodshot eyes.

“Alright, then that shit was sick as fuck!”

“That’s my nigga!” Warlock whooped.

Nikky smiled awkwardly at my unselfconscious admiration and seemed to grow even more uncomfortable if that was even possible.

“Yeah, Nikky’s got a mind like my nine. Mutherfuckin’ cocked and loaded, baby boy. You know he’s in that mentally gifted program at school. They got him reading all kinds of ill shit. Philosphy, literature, poetry. That’s were he gets most of the material for his rhymes.”

“I knew he didn’t make that shit up himself.” Devin declared triumphantly.

“He does make it up himself, fool. The words are his. He just gets the ideas from the books and shit. Fuck am I talkin’ to your bitch ass for anyway? You lost, nigga. Now get the fuck up off my car. We outta here, son. Got some business to take care of. You wanna ride along little homie?” Warlock asked, grinning at me with his braces shining in the afternoon sun.

“Sure.”

Warlock slid behind the wheel of the big Lincoln and Nikky and I bounced into the backseat. He pulled out some top paper and a sack of weed the size of a handbag and began rolling a joint. His bony effeminate fingers caressed the rolling papers almost lovingly as he sprinkled the marijuana down into it like a French chef seasoning a soufflé, holding it between thumbs and middle fingers with his index fingers sticking out and up in the air. He whipped his long narrow tongue along the edge of the paper, gave it several twists to close it, fired it up with a gold zippo lighter, took a long hit, and then passed it to me as he started to cough.

“This is some good shit.” He wheezed between coughs.

All of this happened in what seemed like seconds. I held the joint in my hands and looked over at Nikky who smiled at me and waved me on impatiently. I took a huge hit and immediately began coughing convulsively.

Fifteen minutes later we were all cruising around the hood passing the joint around. It was the first time I had ever gotten high and my head felt like it was filled with helium. My thoughts sloshed around my head in an inarticulate jumble and came out of my mouth the same way.

“Yo, my niggas, we need to get us some of those cheeseburgers from Mickey D’s or some Tasty Kakes or some shit. I’m hungry as a muthafucka! You know they don’t put enough chips in them potato chip bags. They all full of air now. Damn pretzels supposed to be soft, but they hard as a mutherfucka. I don’t want none of them big Jewish pickles neither! They look like Frankenstein’s dick. Pass me that joint, nigga!”

Warlock and Nikky laughed every time I spoke, which made me laugh as well. I was tore up from the floor up, rolling around in the backseat of the Continental, giggling and dropping marijuana ashes all over the brand new blue suede upholstery.

“Fool, don’t you set my seats on fire back there! Pass me that shit before you waste it all!”

Warlock, Nikky, and I started hanging out everyday after that; getting high and composing rap lyrics. Sometimes I would go bombing with them. We would fill our backpacks with Krylon or Rustoleum spray paint stolen from the hardware store. Warlock insisted that we steal it even though he had enough money to buy the store out. That was part of the tradition he said.

“Only toy muthafuckas buy the shit. Real bombers steal it! Guerilla warfare, my nigga! Artistic terrorism!”

We would hit the school yards at both of the neighborhood elementary schools and both Martin Luther King and Germantown High, then we would hop on the back of the SEPTA rail trains, ride them, to the end of the line, and tag trains down in the yard.