Tiger didn’t say anything to that, just started scooping up bags and piling them in his duffel bag.
T.C. studied him for a little while. “Actually, why don’t you leave that with me?” he motioned for the weed.
“How I’m a sell it then, bruh?”
“You not gon’ sell more than a few bags today. Most of the customer base already bought, and they gon’ be straight for a couple weeks. Take a bag or two, then come back for the rest, but I don’t want all that gas out on the street.”
Tiger shrugged, fronting as if he didn’t care, but T.C. could tell he was irritated.
“Have it your way,” he said. He slipped the bags in his pocket and stood up. “I’ll call you when it’s time for more. Make sure you answer your phone, nigga.” He walked toward the door.
“Ain’t you forgetting something?” T.C. asked.
“What? Oh. My bad, mothafucka.” Tiger handed him a rack and watched T.C. count it, his tongue dangling from his mouth while he flipped through the crisp dirty bills.
“It feel good, huh, nigga? It feel good, don’t it?”
T.C. tried not to smile but couldn’t help it.
“You say you owe it to your people to go work for the white man. I say you owe that baby some milk. And that will buy plenty of it.” Tiger walked toward the door.
“I’ll holla at you this evening,” he went on. “Niggas stay talking shit early in the morning. You feelin yourself, you got the whole day ahead of you, but let’s see what you sayin’ tonight, the world weighing on your shoulder. Shit look different in the twilight, don’t it?”
T.C. sat back down on the mattress and counted it all out again.
T.C. paid MawMaw back, not so fast she got concerned but in spurts that in a few weeks added up to it all. He bought his mama a pea coat. Winter would be here before he knew it, and he was tired of her leaving the house with that one missing button and the lining sticking out the back. She wasn’t as excited as he expected.
“Where you get all that money from, boy? You started with Sybil already?”
He changed the subject. “Mama, the expression you’re looking for is thank you.”
“I just don’t want to see you getting in trouble. Ain’t no coat worth that much.”
He reassured her, while she twirled around in the mirror. Then they sat and watched her stories together.
“Why you bother with this crap, Mama? Nothing has changed since I got locked up.”
“Yeah, it’s similar to life that way,” she said, and he kept quiet after that ’cause that was the thing about his mama. She’d drop some knowledge sometimes that made you think. With his own baby around, he had stopped being so hard on her. Yeah, she still went ham on him sometimes, but she’d had a hard life, raised him all by herself really. He’d heard rumors from Aunt Sybil when she had too much wine that his daddy had been the love of his mama’s life, that he was in and out the first year of T.C.’s life, but something happened after that, and he was just out. T.C. wanted to compensate for all the pain that man had caused her, make enough in life so she’d be comfortable. He knew that level of wealth wasn’t going to come from dealing, but he was starting to seriously consider his auntie’s offer. She had texted that he had another couple of weeks to decide, and it was all he thought about most days, to go or not to go. He knew it seemed like an obvious decision from the outside. A wide-open plain versus a dead-end hallway, but there was something holding him back from calling her and accepting, a knot in his chest that formed every time he imagined himself in that office, representing his auntie on any level, the certainty that he would find a way to fuck it all up.
Still he needed to do something; the baby was growing. One month already, and Malik had his daddy’s same big lips, wide-open nostrils, thick nappy hair, and red skin. T.C. slept at Alicia’s most nights. He didn’t feel an obligation to, he just wanted to be there to see her wake up out of instinct right before the baby started crying, hear her coo with the baby though she must have been dog tired. She held Malik as though the inside of her elbow had been crafted to fit this specific child. And something about seeing her nurture his son made T.C. feel as if he was being nurtured, made him feel as if he would be nurtured for the rest of his life.
He didn’t mean to start looking for rings, he just did it. The plaza used to be the place to go for all things ranging from Girbaud jeans to leather sofas. T.C.’s first job was at Spencer’s, a gag gift store on the second floor, and he and his boys would meet at the food court every day after work, walk up and down the brown tiled floors, hit up the arcade, the ice cream shop, the Chick-fil-A. Sometimes if he had a little money, he’d go to the movies or buy a girl a record. Then crime spiked, stores closed, and a few years later, Katrina finished what white flight started. Now the only legitimate shopping center was in Metairie, so he borrowed his mama’s car and headed over. His boy worked at a jewelry counter up in Macy’s, a place T.C. couldn’t afford to buy socks from ordinarily, but his friend hooked T.C. up with a discount when he bought his diamond earring, and T.C. was hoping for similar treatment today. He skimmed the rows and rows of rings. Some gold, some white gold, some round, some square, some sapphire, some emerald, some solitaire, some with two diamonds. It was overwhelming as fuck, as if the world were conspiring against him, as if maybe it were all a setup keeping the black family apart. His friend walked up then.
“Yo, T.C., what’s up, I didn’t know you was out.” He was hyped at first, but he lowered his voice when the other customers turned to him.
“Yeah, bruh,” T.C. talked low too, “It’s been a few months. I had a baby boy and everything.”
“For real? Lemme see pictures.”
T.C. pulled out his phone and flipped through its memory.
“Damn, bruh, you ain’t got to worry if that’s your kid, huh?”
T.C. shook his head.
“You lucky like that. I’m still not sure with my second one. My first one, no question. His mama loyal like a mothafucka. But the second one don’t really look like me. She dark for one.”
“Her mama dark?”
“Hell, no, you know that’s not my type. And you see I’m light as a mothafucka. So it don’t compute, but what the hell?” He shrugged. “All this time, and I ain’t had no test done, I might as well just accept it. What I’ma do, get her tested at her high school graduation?”
They both laughed and shook their heads.
“Anyway, what can I help you with, bruh?”
“Well, say, bruh, I was wondering if you could hook up a discount for a nigga.”
“Hell yeah, anything for you, bruh, and then since we celebratin’, you could get my employee discount too,” he whispered that last part. “What you getting? Your lil’ boy got his ear pierced yet?”
“Nah, he only a month.”