Let Me Hear a Rhyme Read online

  “Aye, I can’t breathe,” I cough out.

  “Man, stop bitching,” he laughs, loosening his hold. “So, yo, you think about what we talked about the other day?”

  “Um, yeah. Yeah.”

  Mack squeezes harder. “Don’t bullshit me. I’m serious.”

  “I’m . . . thinking.”

  “All I’m saying is, you got real potential and—”

  “I know! Damn. I’m . . . just not sure if I’m ready. . . .”

  “You ready, you just shook. But it’s aight, playboy.” He releases me and pats my shoulder, leaning in a little closer. “Yo, you still got that deuce deuce?”

  I gulp. “Yeah.”

  “You didn’t use it for something stupid, did you?”

  “Nah!”

  Mack stares me down, and then pokes me in the chest. “I only gave you that shit for your protection. You see what happened to—”

  “Yo! What the dilly, Mack! Rell!”

  Dante comes speeding in our direction.

  Mack sighs. “What up, Dante.”

  “Mack, I was looking for you. Yo . . . ,” he says, lowering his voice. “Word is, some kids off Bainbridge been trying to creep on your turf and make a name for themselves.”

  I try stepping away. Less I know about Mack’s business, the better. But Mack keeps me locked close.

  “Oh, word,” he says, rubbing his chin, his face unreadable. “Aight. Good looking.”

  Dante brightens, as if he did right. “Aight, check y’all later!”

  Dante rushes off quick as he came. Mack shakes his head with a smirk.

  “I swear, that kid be telling me everything. Even shit I ain’t worried about.”

  Giving the fellas the demos should handle most of Bed-Stuy. We had the rest of Brooklyn to take care of. And the street vendors on Fulton was gonna be the fastest way to do it.

  Fulton Street starts from all the way in Cypress Hill, running through Bed-Stuy, Clinton Hill, and stopping way downtown close to Borough Hall. Folks from Crown Heights, Fort Greene, even Brownsville hit Fulton for one reason or another. Clothes, shoes, sheets, towels, jewelry, TVs, music, weed, crack, groceries . . . you name it, Fulton Street got it or knows how to get it.

  You hit Fulton Street on a Saturday, you gonna see everybody shopping, from grandmas to teen moms. Saturday had the most foot traffic. Especially around the A&S on Fulton Street Mall.

  “Let’s start with him,” I say, pointing to the young cat, setting up two brown folding tables with the newest bootleg movies and CDs.

  “Why him?” Quady asks.

  “’Cause he’s playing that Nasty Nas.”

  Quady taps my arm. “Nah, bump that. Let’s start with duke over there.”

  To our far right, homie with the fresh Caesar cut, thick gold cable chain, and blue Starter jacket has his tables set up with the black crushed-velvet tablecloth and red boom box bumping DMX.

  “Homie got style. He gonna recognize good music.”

  “Aight, let me do the talking.”

  “Why you?”

  “’Cause I’m nice with it! And ain’t nobody wanna hear no cornball jokes from some light-skin Eddie Murphy wannabe.”

  Quady rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”

  Homie sees us approach and starts rearranging the table, looking wild busy.

  “Sup, sup, sup! How y’all doing? Got that new Jay-Z, Big Pun, Cam’ron. What you need, I got it!”

  “Like your style, son,” I say. “But what we need is a pusher.”

  He chuckles. “A what?”

  “I got this new joint here . . . everybody’s gonna wanna get with.”

  Homie rolls his eyes. “You a rapper?”

  Damn, why people keep asking me that?

  “Nah nah, my main mans is though. He’s the truth, for real.”

  “Yo, kid, I got like five of you coming to me every day looking for a hookup.”

  “But you ain’t heard nothing like this!”

  He blows out air and laughs. “Please, I’ve heard it all before.”

  “Just listen. And if you don’t like it, we’ll move on.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Aight. But only cause it’s mad early, and I don’t got no customers yet. Let me hear what you got.”

  I give him volume one and skip to track seven. Steph’s voice bumps through the speakers and . . . I can’t really explain it . . . but every time I hear him, it makes me miss him more.

  “Aight, homie, ya man got flow,” he finally says, glancing me over. “I’ll take three.”

  “Just three? Nah, you gonna need more than that. Probably gonna sell out of these by the end of the week. Make it six.”

  “Aight. But need to be on consignment. Split the profits seventy/twenty.”

  “Man, are you smoking something? Your math all messed up. Seventy plus twenty don’t even make a hundred!”

  “Listen, I’m out here doing all the work, and taking the risk, so I name the price!”

  Quady looks nervous. Glad I ain’t.

  “Yo, let me break it down for you—we giving you that good shit. Sound quality straight, no scratches or nothing. Not that bootleg crap you be getting from Chinatown. Think about how many people come back trying to return CDs. We give you this, they gonna want more. Now I know you taking all the risk, but we providing the product. How about this? Take five, we do a sixty/forty split. And if you sell out by the weekend, we bring you back two dozen and we split fifty-five, forty-five. Twenty-four times ten, hell, let’s say nine if you trying to be nice, is two sixteen, minus ninety-seven for our share plus another five for delivery is roughly, a buck-o-two. So we straight?”

  Homie nods his head real slow. “Aight, that sound good.”

  “Quady, give this good man the goods.”

  Quady blinks out of a trance and hands him five CDs, and I offer homie a handshake.

  “Pleasure doing business with you. And if you need more, I put my pager number inside on the bottom left-hand corner.”

  Homie still seems lost. “Uh, yeah. Likewise, young man,” he says, as he reaches for the Stop button on his boom box.

  “Nah nah nah, man. Let it play. Let people hear. I’m telling you. They coming. This is just volume one. We got volume two if you interested next time.”

  Homie rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. We’ll see.”

  I give Quady the look and we walk off quick.

  “Son! How you do all that math in your head like that?” he whispers.

  “Easy,” I chuckle. “And duke so lost he don’t even know I hustled him into giving us fifty percent of his profits.”

  Quady daps me up. “Good lookin’, kid.”

  We make the corner and head down the block, where Jasmine is leaned up on a mailbox.

  “Well?” she says.

  “Aight, you up!”

  “Hope he don’t peep game,” Quady sighs.

  “Son, the man can’t add to a hundred!”

  “I know, I’m just saying.”

  “I got this, Quady,” Jazz says all soft. “Don’t worry.”

  Quady looks at her and nods. “Aight.”

  Why it feel like she was asking his permission or something?

  Jazz passes us and heads down Fulton Street. We follow, staying hidden by the corner, watching her walk all casually down the street before stopping in front of Homie. Once again, duke makes himself mad busy as she approaches.

  “Sup sup sup, how you doing, young lady. Got that new L-Boogie, Mary J., Eve, 112. What you need, I got you.”

  “Ooo . . . what’s this you playing now?” she asks, bobbing her head. “This is tight. I think I heard this last night at a party.” She sings the hook. “Yeah! That’s it! Yo, me and my girls were just rocking to this.”

  Homie’s eyes light up. He quickly grabs the CD case and reads off the cover. “Oh yeah, that’s that new . . . new, uh, Architect. Yeah. Kid’s about to blow up!”

  “Architect? Never heard of him, but I like his style.”

  “
You hear that flow?” he says, bopping his head too. “That rumble. Yo, he’s coming for cats’ necks! You heard it here first, ma!”

  Jazz smiles and picks up the CD. “How much?”

  “Ten, but for you, sweetheart, I’ll do nine.”

  Jazz pulls crinkled up dollars out her pocket. “Thanks.”

  “Thank YOU! And that’s just volume one. I got volume two coming . . . uh . . . end of this weekend.”

  “Oh word? He got two? Oh, I’m definitely coming back! You the only person I’ve seen sell these.”

  Homie smiles real big as Jazz walks off and we meet up with her two blocks down.

  “Well, it worked,” she says with a grin.

  “Aye yo, good idea, Quady,” I laugh.

  “Told y’all,” he smirks. “It’s all about the ladies.”

  “Aight. That’s one down,” Jasmine says, staring up the street with a sigh. “Twenty-five blocks to go.”

  14

  Jasmine

  Mom is mad obsessed with cleaning now.

  Since she went back to work, she’s been taking extra hours to save up. But when she’s not working, she’s cleaning. That means I’m cleaning, and we ain’t doing no regular cleaning. We do that deep, deep, deep clean. That wash all windows, scrub the bottom of the stove, dust the tops of shelves type cleaning. But it’s all good—as long as my music is playing, I’m cool.

  “What I tell you about them baggy pants, Jasmine?”

  I glance down at my Guess jeans; the wide black belt and silver buckle have them sitting right on my hips.

  “You want to dress like a boy or a girl?”

  “Girls wear their jeans like this, Mom. It’s the style!”

  “Hmph, some style. Why can’t you dress like Ms. Stewart’s daughter, Tania? She has nice taste.”

  Ain’t no way I’m dressing like Chicken-Head Tania in her crop shirts and tight booty shorts that’s been on the floor of every brotha’s nasty bedroom in Brevoort.

  “That just ain’t me, Mom.”

  She shakes her head, lifting the left side of the sofa so I can vacuum underneath.

  “How’s school?” she asks.

  Lauryn Hill is on repeat again. It’s crazy how much I love this album. It like . . . speaks to my soul for real. Mom likes it too. I peep her bobbing her head to “Lost Ones.”

  “School’s okay.” Honestly, I wouldn’t know. Been distracted and mad busy selling Steph’s demos and making some serious cash. I can’t believe people really feeling my brother like this. I wish I could tell Mom about it. She’d be so proud.

  “You ain’t giving the teachers problems this year, are you?”

  “I told you, that wasn’t my fault. Ms. Grant was trying to teach out of a textbook that had one paragraph about slavery. ONE! It didn’t even talk about the Nat Turner rebellion or Harriet Tubman leading slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad, or the freedom papers or . . .”

  “Lawd, you have so much of your father in you. He used to flip desks back in high school when they refused to celebrate Black History Month. He went around trying to organize a Black Panther Party right in school. Your grandmother came down and knocked some sense into him.”

  I laugh. “And you loved him even then?”

  “Of course! First man I ever knew who called me ‘Queen’ and really went out of his way to make me feel like one. We never had much money, but I never felt so . . . royal.”

  Daddy had to have serious game to kick it to a hard rock like Mom.

  “How’s that job going?” she asks.

  “It’s . . . uh . . . it’s okay. Busy. How’s the investigation going?”

  Mom blinks twice. “Oh. It’s . . . well, these things take time, Jasmine. Steph ain’t even been gone a month yet.”

  “It’s been eight weeks, Mom,” I mumble to the floor.

  Mom shakes her head, like I said something crazy. “What? No it hasn’t.”

  “It’s October, Mom. Halloween is next week. Steph died . . . in August.”

  Mom huffs, waving her arms around. “Well . . . whatever. The police are handling this, Jasmine! Let them do their job. Stop worrying about that and help me in this kitchen.”

  You can’t tell, but my room has been cotton-candy pink since I was a baby. I’ve been begging Mom to let me repaint it. Dark blue, green, purple . . . anything, but she always says no. So I do the next best thing: I cover it up with posters, just like Steph did. Tupac, TLC, MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Roxanne Shanté, Missy Elliot, Yo-Yo . . . every poster that came in a Word Up! magazine or a cover of Vibe, I added to my wall until all that’s left is the ceiling.

  Maybe I’ll put Steph up there, when he’s on the cover of The Source magazine. Like he’s watching me from heaven.

  I left my Lauryn CD in the living room with Mom, and I wasn’t trying to go back out there so she could find something else for me to clean. It’s aight, though. Funkmaster Flex is on HOT 97. Plus, I’m rereading Assata Shakur’s autobiography. Daddy bought it for Mom, but she was never really interested. Me, though, I couldn’t get enough. A militant revolutionary so committed to black liberation she even took on an African name. This should be required reading for all women.

  Gotta stop by Kenny’s and cop some more CDs before I meet up with Rell and Quady tomorrow. But then that means . . . he may ask me to go to a meeting. And I don’t know how long I have until they come looking for me.

  Bzzzz Bzzzz

  Oh shoot, that’s Steph’s pager! This is the first time it’s ever rung. Someone must be looking for him.

  Bzzzz Bzzzz

  I jump up and grab the pager from the hiding spot under my desk. If it keeps buzzing, Mom may hear it.

  917-224-4747

  I hit *67 to block my number and call back. A man’s voice answers on the first ring.

  “Steph? Steph, you there? Where are you?”

  There’s some static and his voice is real low, so he must be on a cell phone or something. I hold a blanket over the phone so he can’t hear me breathing (I peeped this in a movie once). There’s some clicking, a window rolls up, and I hear Biggie in the background. That “Kick in the Door” beat is unmistakable.

  “Hello? You there? Hello? Hellooooo?”

  He don’t sound like some kid. He sounds older . . . and white. What he want with Steph?

  Just as I was about to speak up, I hear it. It’s faint with the window closed, but outside, someone’s car is bumpin’ the same song. It drives by and it’s silent again. Both on the phone and outside.

  He knows where Steph lives. Where I live.

  “Hey, kid. You don’t want to play games with me. Call me back.”

  Click.

  15

  Quadir

  “This is it,” Ronnie whispers in my ear. “Don’t fuck it up.”

  Damn. No pressure.

  Ronnie has on this long black velvet dress with sheer sleeves and two slits that stop way up her thigh. I’m trying hard not to stare, but she looks so damn sexy, I can’t keep my hands off her. She won’t let me kiss her ’cause I’ll mess up her makeup, which already got her looking like a whole other person.

  I’m also trying to distract myself from thinking about all them people in the hall waiting for our big entrance.

  Ronnie adjusts my pink satin tie and vest that matches one of the dresses she’s changing into tonight. The rest of the friends in her royal court are laughing and dancing behind us. All the fellas have on fly black shirts and slacks, the ladies sleeveless black dresses. They look mad relaxed, probably ’cause they all cheerlead together and dance at parties. I’m the only nondancer in the crew.

  “You okay?” she asks, patting down her swoop bang. She put in these long extensions that stop around her mid-back, even though her hair was long already. She really don’t need all this extra stuff; I already thought she was pretty before.

  “Yeah, I’m cool.”

  She looks me over like she don’t believe me and starts to say something, but then the party pl
anner gives us our cue, and everyone rushes into formation. The double doors swing open, bright spotlights falling down on us.

  I don’t have much time to scope out the room, but I swear all of Brevoort is up in here to witness me make a fool out of myself. Neighbors, classmates, cats from the courts, even some ladies from church surround the dance floor. Rell is in front of the mini stage, already laughing. Man, I hate him sometimes.

  There’s pink everywhere. Pink tablecloths, pink balloons, pink twinkling Christmas lights, pink flowers, and a giant pink cake with Happy Sweet Sixteen Veronica written on each layer in gold glitter. I ain’t never seen anything like it. It’s like a wedding, and the thought of that makes me want to run into traffic.

  We file onto the dance floor and take our positions, Ronnie and I the last to enter. Everyone’s cheering and taking pictures before a hush falls over the crowd. The DJ turns on Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody?” and we break out into the first steps of the dance number. I swear we watched that video a billion times and practiced the routine all summer, but I’m still shook. I also wasn’t expecting Ronnie dancing in some sexy dress with splits and heels, showing the whole hood her goods, so I keep counting out all the steps to the Timbaland beat.

  DUM dum. Dum dum dum dum DUM.

  During one of the turns, I spot her pops standing by her moms taking pictures with a disposable camera. He straight up looks like Deebo from that movie Friday, all swole in the chest and arms. That man never smiles, but he takes one look at Ronnie and all that hardness melts off him. But when he looks at me, his eyes go dark, and I know I better not mess this up or he’ll kill me.

  We’re midway through the dance. Ronnie is smiling, looking all happy while I’m sweating bullets. Her heel slips and she almost falls, but I catch her and smooth it out, pretending I tripped instead. I rather take the L for us both. Her eyes go wide and she laughs.

  At the end of the song, it turns into this type of flamenco dancing, the fellas tap dancing while the girls wave lacy fans. When we finish, I have to dip Ronnie, but I’m nervous ’cause her dress is mad low cut and I don’t want her titties falling out, so I dip her a little and pull her back up. She cuts her eyes at me while the crowd goes wild, cheering and clapping. They bum rush us on the dance floor, giving us hugs and daps.