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We use brown paper bags. They use coffee mugs. They ain’t no better.
    As the jakes were talking to E-Bone and Ruby, we all slowly slithered back to the corner and chilly-pimp’d it, panning the crowd. You always gotta be careful when folks get into little crowds. That’s when people start to drink their I-can-fuck-with-them juice. So we posted up and had our eyes lurking. I could see all the old folks leaning over their porch railings looking down to see what was going on. Nosy-ass people. Every window on the block was lit up with little dark figures peeking their heads out.
    At the very top of the street, I could see Smoke and his boys standing on the high porch of his crib, a glowing doorway behind them, none of them wearing coats, shivering and fumbling all over each other, looking down the block like the pack of corny-ass classroom niggas they are. I used to go to school with them niggas, they some diet-thugs for real, Smoke’s the only one in their little crew with heart, the rest of them cats are straight pussy.
    See, me and Smoke, we were cool at one point. More like business partners. Long story short: we decided to pursue our local hood pharmaceutical endeavors on different ends of the street. Lothrop Ave. and Verndale Road, that’s me and mine’s, it ain’t much but I eat good over here. Smoke, he can have all the bullshit up the block on Lothrop and Decker Street.We had some serious conflicts in morals, which is really what caused us to have to just walk our separate paths. I guess I’m more like a Robin-Hood-X-type brother. I do what I do to get by in the hustle game, but I look out for my peoples. I ride for mine’s. Smoke’s the type of nigga that’ll steal your wallet and help you look for the shit. Only looks out for himself, if your money’s green, he’s got what you need, no questions asked. The other day I saw him serve some young bucks that looked about his little brother Beezy’s age. Them little cats couldn’t be no older than ten or eleven like Andre and that’s a damn shame.
    I heard the buzz of the crowd muffle down and I refocused on them. I saw the pigs cuffing E-Bone as he yelled out at everyone, “Y’all can go back inside now. Show’s over!”
    The swine tussled him toward the car, then like a little beam of light Andre ran out of the house barefooted, wearing an old ratty oversized T-shirt. He stopped a few feet away from the cruiser and sounded off like a big dog, through the whimpers of his cries, “Pop, I hate you! You just gon’ leave us on Christmas, huh? Go ’head! Just leave! Don’t you ever come back!”
    Papa Tanks grabbed Andre, hugging him tight and rubbing his head as he sobbed into his stomach. Nana Tanks consoled Ruby as she wept, while Nina stood arms folded next to her aunt Diamond, Miss Ruby’s younger sister. They all watched from the walkway behind their fence.
    Nina looked up at Papa Tanks and asked, “So, what are we going to do now?”
    He looked up the street at the jakes. “You mustn’t get involved in the grown business of a man and his woman, you understand me?”
    She looked confused but nodded yes anyway.
    When I heard Andre snapping, I felt them words. Way back when, I cried some tears like those too. Back when my mother told me I was going to have a sleepover with cousin Tony over at Aunty Gladys’s crib, but when she tossed me a duffel bag full of clothes, said, “Have fun,” and didn’t even walk me up onto the porch, I knew she wasn’t coming back. It wasn’t the first time she’d disappeared in the streets.
    I used to live over in Dorchester on Dakota Street, at my grandmother’s. My mother came around sometimes, but she had a real bad thing for the needle and anyone who could help her fill it. She was one of my father’s favorite hoes, but he cut her loose when she got too fiended-out, stopped following orders, and started messing up his money. He had a reputation for having a stable of the best-looking broads around and she