Daddy disappears into his office and returns with his Glock. He’s not supposed to carry it since he’s a felon, but he says that technically he doesn’t carry it. He keeps it in his office.
He looks out at the person on the other side of the door. “What you want?”
“I’m hungry,” a guy says. “Can I buy something?”
Daddy unlocks the door and holds it open. “You got five minutes.”
“Thanks,” DeVante says as he comes in. His Afro puff has become a full-blown Afro. He has this wild look about him, and I don’t mean ’cause of his hair, but like in his eyes. They’re puffy and red and darting around. He barely gives me a nod when he passes.
Daddy waits at the cash register with his piece.
DeVante glances outside. He looks at the chips. “Fritos, Cheetos, or Dori—” His voice trails off as he glances again. He notices me watching him and looks at the chips. “Doritos.”
“Your five minutes getting shorter,” Daddy says.
“Damn, man. A’ight!” DeVante grabs a bag of Fritos. “Can I get something to drink?”
“Hurry up.”
DeVante goes to the refrigerators. I join Daddy at the cash register. It’s so obvious something is up. DeVante keeps stretching his neck to look outside. His five minutes pass at least three times. It doesn’t take anybody that long to choose between Coke, Pepsi, or Faygo. I’m sorry but it doesn’t.
“A’ight, Vante.” Daddy motions him to the cash register. “You trying to get the nerve to stick me up or you running from somebody?”
“Hell nah, I ain’t trying to stick you up.” He takes out a wad of money and sets it on the counter. “I’m paid. And I’m a King. I don’t run from no-damn-body.”
“No, you hide in stores,” I say.
He glares at me, but Daddy tells him, “She right. You hiding from somebody. Kings or GDs?”
“It’s not those GDs from the park, is it?” I ask.
“Why don’t you mind your business?” he snaps.
“You came in my daddy’s business, so I am minding my business.”
“Ay!” Daddy says. “But for real, who you hiding from?”
DeVante stares at his scuffed-up Chucks that are beyond the help of my cleaning kit. “King,” he mumbles.
“Kings or King?” Daddy asks.
“King,” DeVante repeats louder. “He wants me to handle the dudes that killed my brother. I’m not trying to have that on me though.”
“Yeah, I heard ’bout Dalvin,” Daddy says. “I’m sorry. What happened?”
“We were at Big D’s party, and some GDs stepped to him. They got into it, and one of them cowards shot him in the back.”
Oh, damn. That was the same party Khalil and I were at. Those were the gunshots that made us leave.
“Big Mav, how’d you get out the game?” DeVante asks.
Daddy strokes his goatee, studying DeVante. “The hard way,” he eventually says. “My daddy was a King Lord. Adonis Carter. A straight up OG.”
“Yo!” DeVante says. “That’s your pops? Big Don?”
“Yep. Biggest drug dealer this city ever seen.”
“Yo! Man, that’s crazy.” DeVante’s seriously fangirling right now. “I heard he had cops working for him and everything. He pulled in big money.”
I heard my granddaddy was so busy pulling in big money that he didn’t have time for Daddy. There are lots of pictures of Daddy when he was younger wearing mink coats, playing with expensive toys, flashing jewelry, and Grandpa Don isn’t in any of the pictures.
“Probably so,” Daddy says. “I wouldn’t know too much ’bout that. He went to prison when I was eight. Been there ever since. I’m his only child, his son. Everybody expected me to pick up where he left off.
“I became a King Lord when I was twelve. Shit, that was the only way to survive. Somebody was always coming at me ’cause of my pops, but if I was a King Lord I had folks to watch my back. Kinging became my life. I was down to die for it, say the word.”
He glances at me. “Then I became a daddy, and I realized that King Lord shit wasn’t worth dying for. I wanted out. But you know how the game work, it ain’t as easy as saying you done. King was the crown and he was my boy, but he couldn’t let me out like that. I was making good money too, and it was honestly hard to consider walking away from it.”
“Yeah, King says you one of the best d-boys he ever knew,” DeVante says.
Daddy shrugs. “I got it from my pops. But really I was only good ’cause I never got caught. One day, me and King took a trip to do a pickup, and we got busted. Cops wanted to know who the weapons belonged to. King had two strikes, and that charge would’ve meant life. I didn’t have a record, so I took the charge and got a few years and probation. Loyal like a motha.
“Those were the hardest three years of my life. Growing up I was pissed at my daddy for going to prison and leaving me. And there I was, in the same prison as him, missing out on my babies’ lives.”
DeVante’s eyebrows meet. “You were in prison with your pops?”
Daddy nods. “All my life, people made him sound like a real king, you know what I’m saying? A legend. But he was a weak old man, regretting the time he missed with me. Realest thing he ever told me was, ‘Don’t repeat my mistakes.’” Daddy looks at me again. “And I was doing that. I missed first days of school, all that. Had my baby wanting to call somebody else daddy ’cause I wasn’t there.”
I look away. He knows how close Uncle Carlos and I became.
“I was officially done with the King Lord shit, drug shit, all of it,” Daddy says. “And since I took that charge, King agreed to let me out. It made those three years worth it.”
DeVante’s eyes dim like they do when he talks about his brother. “You had to go to prison to get out?”
“I’m the exception, not the rule,” Daddy says. “When people say it’s for life, it’s for life. You gotta be willing to die in it or die for it. You want out?”
“I don’t wanna go to prison.”
“He didn’t ask you that,” I say. “He asked if you wanted out.”
DeVante is quiet for a long time. He looks up at Daddy and says, “I just wanna be alive, man.”
Daddy strokes his goatee. He sighs. “A’ight. I’ll help you. But I promise, you go back to slinging or banging, you’ll wish King would’ve got you when I’m done. You go to school?”
“Yeah.”
“What your grades look like?” Daddy asks.
He shrugs.
“What the hell is this?” Daddy imitates DeVante’s shrug. “You know what grades you get, so what kind?”
“I mean, I get As and Bs and shit,” DeVante says. “I ain’t dumb.”
“A’ight, good. We gon’ make sure you stay in school too.”
“Man, I can’t go back to Garden High,” DeVante says. “All them King Lords up in there. You know that’s a death wish, right?”
“I ain’t say you was going there. We’ll figure something out. In the meantime you can work here in the store. You been staying home at night?”
“Nah. King got his boys watching for me over there.”
“Of course he do,” Daddy mumbles. “We’ll figure something out with that too. Starr, show him how to do the price stickers.”
“You’re really hiring him, just like that?” I ask.
“Whose store is this, Starr?”
“Yours, but—”
“’Nuff said. Show him how to do the price stickers.”
DeVante snickers. I wanna punch him in his throat.
“C’mon,” I mumble.
We sit crossed-legged in the chip aisle. Daddy locks the front door and goes back in his office. I grab a jumbo bag of Hot Cheetos and slap a ninety-nine-cent sticker on them.
“You supposed to show me how to do it,” DeVante says.
“I am showing you. Watch.”
I grab another bag. He leans real close over my shoulder. Too close. Breathing in my ear and shit. I move my head and look at him. “Do you mind?”
“What’s your problem with me?” he asks. “You caught an attitude yesterday, soon as I walked up. I ain’t did nothing to you.”
I put a sticker on some Doritos. “No, but you did it to Denasia. And Kenya. And who knows how many other girls in Garden Heights.”
“Hold up, I ain’t do nothing to Kenya.”