“Ain’t no ‘buts’ about this,” he said sharply, cutting me off. “Straight up, I thought we was gonna have to shoot our way out of some shit you stirred up. You keep running your mouth, you gonna get us killed.”
I hated when Duck got mad at me. It gave me a feeling in my stomach that matched the look on Beaver Cleaver’s face the time he broke his dad’s car window playing baseball in the street. It didn’t help that Duck was lecturing me like he was my daddy. “What you need to do,” he continued, getting out of his truck and slamming the door behind him, “is calm your ass all the way down.”
I tried to do better. For weeks I kept my head down, sold my rock, and made my money. I didn’t get into a single argument with anybody. Except Derrick, the day he came by Baldwin asking me for cash. I knew damn well he was spending it on some girl named Tinkerbell, because Stephanie had seen the two of them together. Derrick and I got into it, yelling and screaming in the middle of the road, until he clocked me with a closed fist. A little old lady sweeping her porch saw us and called the cops. But other than fighting with Derrick, I kept a real low profile.
I even kept my music down. I had a banging sound system in my Cadillac, and my instinct told me to blast 2 Live Crew loud enough to rattle the windows of every house on the block. But instead I kept it low key with a little Janet Jackson.
“Oh you nasty boys . . .” I sang along under my breath one afternoon, leaning up against the side of my car. The kids were in the backseat. Nikia had a bottle and Ashley was eating the fries from her Happy Meal. I’d just picked them up from day care and was thinking maybe I would call it an early night. I could go by Derrick’s place and the two of us could take the kids to the movies. Nikia was too young to appreciate a good story, but Ashley was three years old. If I covered her face during the scary part, we could see A Nightmare on Elm Street 5.
“Y’all want to catch a movie?” I asked the kids, leaning into the back window.
Before they could answer, I heard someone call my name. “Rabbit!”
One of my regulars, Theotris, dressed in a filthy T-shirt and scuffed tennis shoes, was coming down the block, headed my way. Damn, I thought. Theotris was always a problem. I didn’t know exactly what was wrong with him, but when he was high, sometimes I’d catch him standing in the middle of the block having a heated argument with the mailbox.
“What you looking for?” I asked as he approached me.
Instead of telling me he wanted a dime sack, like I’d been expecting, Theotris walked around to the back of my Cadillac, cleared his throat, and spat on my ride.
It wasn’t a regular spit, either; it was like he pulled it from deep down in his navel. Like he’d been saving it up just for me. The ball of grayish-brown mucus hit my back fender with a thud. I watched, stunned, as Theotris, apparently satisfied with the way he’d redecorated my car, hopped up and planted his ass on my trunk, reclining onto the back window like he was chillin’ at the beach.
In all the months I’d had been driving my car, nobody—and I mean NOBODY—had so much as laid a pinkie finger on it without my permission. Everybody knew that a ride as flashy as mine was strictly for standing back and admiring. That was the whole damn point.
“The fuck you doing, muthafucka?” I yelled, storming around to face him.
“Just maxin’ and relaxin’.”
“Hell to the muthafuckin’ no you ain’t ‘maxin’ and relaxin’ on my muthafuckin’ car!”
I ran back to the front passenger side, stuck my hand inside the window, reached into Nikia’s baby-blue diaper bag sitting on the front seat, moved the Pampers and the crack to the side, and pulled out Derrick’s .38. Then I marched back to Theotris sitting on my trunk. I pointed the pistol right between his legs. “You don’t get the fuck off my car,” I growled, “I’ma turn your dick into a blooming onion.”
Theotris jumped up with a start and I watched with satisfaction as he ran back up the street. “That’s right, take your crazy ass on home!” I called after him. “You stupid muthafucka!”
Halfway up the block, he turned and held out his arms like Jesus on the cross. “You better watch out, Rabbit. When I come back you ’bout to get your head blowed off! With the power vested in me, I’ma kill you dead.”
Yeah, whatever, man, I thought, rolling my eyes.
When Granddaddy and I used to watch Georgia Championship Wrestling at the liquor house, it wasn’t just the fighting I liked, it was also the way those wrestlers would put on a show. Seeing grown men growling and barking at each other like angry dogs was my kind of entertainment. But once I started working on Baldwin, I didn’t need a TV to see folks acting the fool. The block served every flavor of crazy, and Theotris, with his spitting and threats, was just the special of the day. I don’t need to take the kids to the movies, I thought to myself, with a laugh. With this shit, all I need is some popcorn.
That’s when I felt the bullet fly past my left ear.
Theotris was running down the street, a pistol in his hand, shooting right at me. “I’ma kill you!”
Another bullet zipped past me on the right. I took off running as fast as I could toward the only place that looked safe, Miss June’s house. I bolted past the fence, through the yard, and up the steps of her back porch. As I ran, I felt a sharp pain across my chest, but I kept on going. All I wanted was to get inside, away from the bullets that were whipping through the air like firecrackers. As I reached my hand out for Miss June’s back door, I could hear folks on the block hollering at each other, “Get down!”
I burst into the kitchen, the door slamming behind me. Duck was already inside. He took one look at me and, for the first time ever, I saw panic in his eyes.
“Rabbit,” he said, stepping toward me and pointing at my chest. “You been hit!”
I reached for my chest; the front of my shirt was covered in blood.
“Call 911!” Duck yelled to his mother.
“No!” I cried, suddenly going cold with a realization that struck me harder than a bullet. I could hardly get the words out as I stumbled back toward the door: “My babies . . . they still in the car!”
I grabbed for the doorknob but Duck threw his arms around me, pulling me back. “You can’t go out there. You been hit!”
Duck had a good grip on me, but he was no match for the superhuman mama strength I had in that moment. I raised my arm and knocked him to the ground. “I gotta get my muthafuckin’ babies!” I yelled, flinging open the back door.
“Hold up!” Duck called after me. “The kids are okay! They’re safe.”
Butterfly, who’d been on Baldwin when the shooting started, had snatched my children out of the car and run with them to the front of the house. When I turned around and saw her standing in Miss June’s kitchen, holding Nikia in her arms and Ashley by the hand, I started to bawl.
I reached out for Ashley; my hands were covered in blood. “Baby, come here,” I said. But she wouldn’t move. She just stared at me with her eyes as big as dinner plates and her little hands squeezing her cheeks, like she was trying to hold herself together.