“Word up!” Al-Malik cosigned.
“Yo! What the fuck, man? That’s my mother!”
“I’m just saying, man.” Trey laughed and gave a pound to Al-Malik, who was laughing with him.
“That shit ain’t funny! Y’all muthafuckas gonna catch a bullet talking ’bout my moms!”
“A bullet? From where, nigga? You ain’t got no gat.” Trey continued to laugh, clowning Dante.
“Yeah, but I heard Ms. Reed got one,” Al-Malik said.
Dante hated the way Diamond flaunted around the neighborhood. The men in the neighborhood would whoop and spew sex slurs at her, trying to holler at her. It seemed that Diamond loved the attention, though, and she would flirt outrageously with them. Dante got embarrassed sometimes, because they would talk about her in front of him with no respect. When he was younger he would get into fights at school because Diamond would come to pick him up wearing revealing clothing. The male teachers would simply drool over her with no regard for Dante and how their disrespectful behavior made him feel.
“What up, Trey?” a young boy walking by asked as he slapped hands with Trey. He held a stack of cash in his free hand.
“Damn! It’s like that?” Trey asked, nodding at the wad of bills.
“Hell, yeah, man. I’m telling you, y’all niggas better jump on some of this loot,” the boy said as he continued to walk down the street.
Trey said to Dante and Al-Malik, “That’s what I’m talking about.” He pointed at the boy.
“What are you talking about?” Dante already knew what Trey was referring to. Lately he’d been giving subtle hints about selling drugs.
“I’m talking about getting some paper!” He pointed to the dealers up the street.
“What . . . you tryna get put on with them niggas?” Al-Malik asked. The thought had also crossed his mind on several occasions, and Trey had been putting the bug in his ear, unbeknownst to Dante.
Al-Malik was a bit naive and, at Trey’s prompting, was leaning toward hustling. He, too, had several siblings living in cramped quarters. Al-Malik was the youngest of four, and his siblings were drug users who used their sickly mother for a place to stay because they were lazy and had no ambition. Al-Malik’s two older brothers were on the streets hustling, and his older sister was raising two kids of her own in the hostile environment of Newark.
“Why not?” Trey asked. “Everybody else is eating but us. We fucking sitting around not doing shit. Our mothers are on welfare and shit. I’m tired of living like this while them niggas getting paid.” He looked over at the dealers chopping it up with each other.
“Yeah, I feel you, but we suppose to be staying focused in school. Isn’t that what we said?” Al-Malik, his golden, silky cornrows laying neatly on his back, picked at a scab on his knee. His skin was light from his white father, who he’d never met.
The boys had been friends since elementary school. They’d seen a lot of crime go down in their neighborhoods. They’d even lost classmates while growing up. But the three of them had agreed a long time ago to finish school and get out of the hood the right way. After an ex-con visited their junior high school and told them about his experience in the drug game and spending twenty years of his life in prison, Dante, Al-Malik, and Trey made a pact never to get involved in that lifestyle. They would finish high school and then go to college, making it possible for them to get far away from the streets.
“Yeah, I know what we said, but until then, we need to get a hustle, because I ain’t built for this shit no more.”
Dante and Al-Malik looked at each other and shook their heads. Dante knew selling drugs wasn’t an option for him. He could hear his mother’s words echoing in his head.
“You better take your ass to school so you can make something of yourself. You owe me a degree from college, and I better not ever catch you selling drugs. I ain’t got no money to bail your ass outta jail! You owe for taking care of your ass. You gonna get that college degree and get a good-paying job to pay me back for all the money I spent raising your dumb ass!”
He’d heard those same words for years. Every time his mother got mad about something or strapped for money, she started her ritual of blaming him for her shortcomings, beating him upside the head as she fussed at him. Then she would leave him lying there crying, only to return to the room to beat him some more for crying too loudly.
“Listen, yo, you can do whatchu want, but I ain’t with that,” Dante said.
“You’s a pussy, man,” Trey said. “Your moms got you wrapped around her finger.”
“Yeah, a’ight.” Dante waved his hand at Trey, dismissing him.
“Man, I’m outta here.” Trey walked off, disgusted with his friend.
The two boys’ watched Trey walk down the street over to where the other young boys were selling drugs.
“Come on, Malik, let’s go in the crib,” Dante said.
Al-Malik was confused. He didn’t know whether to go in with Dante or to follow Trey. He too was tired of the struggle. He didn’t want to sell drugs because he feared being shot, and most of all he feared going to jail. And even he knew from hearing his older siblings talk, that if you harbored fear in your heart, then you wouldn’t be able to survive on the mean streets. He hesitated as he looked on and saw Trey laughing and joking with the young boys.
Another one of the young cre