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over in Mattapan Square. He was eating a breakfast plate. Caught slipping, should’ve known the sitting duck always gets fucked.
    My mother didn’t want to believe it until she read it for herself, it made big headlines, “Notorious Gangster Remington ‘Dicey’ Graham Murdered Execution Style in Broad Daylight Outside Eatery in Mattapan Square.”
    My mother was always weak, but I never knew a person could implode and crumble so fast. It’s like my mother went from marble to dust. She stayed in her room for a few days blasting Curtis Mayfield’s
Super Fly
record, crying, screaming,and cursing at God. On the fourth day she took me over to my aunt Gladys’s crib in mild-ass Milton and I been out here ever since.
    Sometimes life just ain’t ’bout shit. I know what it’s going to be like for Andre to grow up on the west side of Milton around these fake-ass people, being that kid from the broken home. All of us Squad Six boys know that struggle, being a have-not in the land of good and plenty. The object of scorn, judgment, and pity.
    I heard the jakes slam their doors and they stopped flickering the red and blues as I watched Papa Tanks walk Andre back inside the house. Once the cruiser topped the hill the neighborhood slowly went back to sleep.
    The next morning I woke up early and decided to spread the Christmas spirit. Since I live on the corner of Verndale Road and little Andre lives on the corner of Lothrop, we’re basically neighbors. I walked over to his spot to see how Miss Ruby was doing. I knocked and Miss Ruby answered the door, her left eye puffed out like a dragonfly, her lips swollen a deep reddish purple. She half smiled.
    “Look, Reggie, you didn’t have to get all up in it last night. But thank you. I hate when he comes up in here acting like that in front of the kids, especially around the holidays. It’s just so hard sometimes, ya know? Sometimes a sister just feels like giving up.”
    Her eyes began to get watery, and I wasn’t trying to get her all upset. I let her know it wasn’t a problem and that I was happy she was okay. Honestly, I wish someone had helped my mother. Maybe she would still be here. Before I left, she gave me a hug and held on tight. I reached in my pocket andwhispered in her ear, “I’m glad to see you’re getting along fine on Christmas. Hope y’all have a good one.” Then I slid her a stack.
    Immediately she gave me the screw face. “Reggie, do you know how much money you just gave me?” She shuffled the bills and looked up at me. “This is ten hundred-dollar bills.”
    I almost laughed. “Miss Ruby, trust. I
always
count my money. I know Pa’s gone on that iron-lock vacation for a bit. Just hold down your household. I see you grinding out here on some legal shit and I tip my hat to ya. If you or your youngins need anything, holla.”
    I breezed back to my corner.
Andre Battel
    After New Year’s Day passes, Nana Tanks’s baking cycle is complete, and on the second day of the year, her and Nina begin the preparations for next year’s batch of her famous Christmas Black Cake. By the time I make it upstairs to watch
Gladiators
, they’re already sitting at the kitchen table listening to some old-school calypso, Nana Tanks chopping up a big pile of dried dates, raisins, and prunes, Nina sitting beside her carefully gathering all the cuttings and tossing them into Nana Tanks’s tall silver Dutch pot.
    I don’t go and sit by them while they’re chopping because Nana Tanks says she’s suspicious of any boy who’d rather stay up under the women cooking in the kitchen rather than going outside to play. It’s more their thing, they got a little ritual and everything. After all the cutting is done they stand over the nearly full pot of raisins, dates, and prunes, looking down into it like an open grave. Nana Tanks holds the lid as Nina tosses in the last couple of cinnamon sticks and balls of nutmegright before Nana Tanks douses it all in a mixture of rum, wine,