New York City was hot as hell. Sisters strutted the streets wearing shorts so tiny they showed the black of their asses, and I planned to be dressed just like them in a minute. Before long I’d be down in Brooklyn starring in a ghetto version of a wet T-shirt contest. I’d be hitting the streets with my titties busting out of a tank top and jumping in front of a Johnny pump to get sprayed with cold city water.
For now all I could do was hold back my excitement and count down the days. G was heading to the West Coast and he was taking Jimmy with him. They were going to his son Gino’s graduation and would be gone for five whole days. I couldn’t wait until they got on that plane. Me and Rita had all kinds of stuff planned. House parties in the BK, a Thug-a-Licious concert at the Garden, talent night at the Apollo, shopping till the stores closed down, you name it I was gonna do it, and do it all in five days.
G had asked me if I wanted to go and I almost screamed out hell no. Instead I ran him some line about how this would be a good time for Gino and Jimmy to get to know each other and how they didn’t needed a girl hanging around stepping all over that. The truth was I wanted some down time, some time away from G and his damn Spot. I wanted to put on a pair of cut off shorts and let my hair hang down to my ass. I wanted to stroll up and down 125th Street, and maybe even Fordham Road, and eat slices of pizza with extra cheese and fried shrimp with hot sauce straight from a paper bag.
I also wanted to steal some time away from Jimmy, who was sho’ nuff smelling his ass these days. Every time I turned around he was running his mouth about the jobs G had lined up for him and how much bank he was gonna be slinging. And he’d been right about Gino, too. He was coming back to Harlem with G, which was totally crazy if you asked me. Why would G spend all that money to send his son to college if he was gonna bring him back to Harlem and put him in charge of a bunch of crackheads and hoes? You didn’t need no college degree to do that. The streets held class 24/7 and G was living proof of it.
That’s why I knew I had to confront G. I didn’t wanna risk him getting mad and putting me on lockdown while he was gone, so I decided to wait until he came back. But we were gonna talk, that much was for damn sure. Grandmother hadn’t worked like a dog to raise us right just to have Jimmy hustling up in no Spot. It was bad enough that I had to put up with G’s shit just to get my education, but have Jimmy miss out completely on his? No. Just like Gino went to college, Jimmy needed the chance to go too. G didn’t love his son no more than I loved my brother.
I rode with Pacho and Moonie to take G and Jimmy to La Guardia airport in Queens. Inside the terminal I held on to Jimmy’s arm trying to cuddle with him like we used to do when we were kids. He’d gotten so tall, so damned muscular it was almost like he wasn’t my baby brother no more. Dressed like one of them bad-ass thugged-out playas/rappers/dealers who hung on the streets of Harlem, you couldn’t even tell he was the same kid who used to sleep next to me on a pissy, bug-infested mattress.
I took his hand and made him hold mine tight. I could tell he was embarrassed to have me hanging all over him, but at least he kept grinning and squeezing my fingers so I could feel his love. I clung to G a little bit too. Truth was, it was the first time Jimmy would be out of New York City, and I was scared the damn plane would crash and I’d find myself alone without my soul or my source of income. I kept telling myself that nothing bad was gonna happen, that people had to get where they were going and planes flew back and forth safely every day.
Moonie said we couldn’t go all the way with them to the gate because of airline security, so we said our good-byes as they got into a long line of people waiting to go through the checkpoint. Despite my self-talk and all the stuff I was looking forward to doing for five days, I was still scared to see them go. Jimmy looked happier than I’d ever seen him before. He was all up on G’s dick, laughing and joking like he climbed on a damn airplane and left me every day.
G came over and looked down at me. His clothes fit him to a tee and even a fool could see how expensive they were. I stared into his eyes. He was so damn fine. He hugged me to his chest and his arms felt strong and warm around my waist. Why couldn’t he make me feel like this all the time?
“Be good, Juicy,” he said. “If you need anything, see Moonie.” He squeezed me tight. “You know you my girl.”
I raised myself up on my toes and waited, begging him from my heart. Kiss me, G. Please. Put your mouth on mine and let me feel your tongue inside of me. I’ll be a good girl, G. I’ll make you feel so good. Just help me a little bit, G. Please kiss me. I was dying to feel his lips, let him taste mine. Whatever issues I had with G, he was everything to me and Jimmy. He put a roof over our heads when we didn’t have nobody else and even though he’d beat me, I knew he didn’t really mean it. Things could get better, I just knew they could. If we could start with a kiss then maybe we could work our way to a point where G wasn’t turned off and disgusted by having good sex and I wasn’t afraid to show him how much I needed it. But I was waiting in vain. G was old and set in his ways. I was young and busting loose. He pressed two fingers to his lips then touched my forehead. That was it. That was my good-bye kiss.
I sighed and stepped back. “You know you my man, G.” I said it but in my heart I didn’t mean it. I loved the things G did for me, loved what being his woman provided for me and my brother. But love him as my man? Uh-uh. I wasn’t seventeen and cheddar-strung anymore. I was in college now. Meeting people and doing things. True, I’d gone from being the daughter of a crack-ho who slept on a pull-out bed in a rat-infested hole in the wall on 136th Street, to being chosen by the infamous Granite McKay and living so lovely I dripped mad jewelry and never had to play the same outfit twice, but just because I was raised poor didn’t mean I was raised stupid. Yeah, poor sucked and rich was definitely the bomb, but a sister still had her bedroom needs, and the last time I checked a brick of hundred-dollar bills didn’t do much to keep me lubricated at night.
I grabbed Moonie’s arm and waved as they walked toward the security checkpoint. G never looked back, but Jimmy did. He looked just like a little boy again as he turned and waved, a gold hoop earring in his left ear and a pair of expensive headphones hanging around his neck. I wanted to run over to him and snatch him back, to tell him he couldn’t go. But then he grinned, so excited. “You my heart, Juicy-Mo,” he told me, just like he used to.
“And you, Jimmy-Jo,” I said, loving him more than I ever had, “you my soul.”
Five days was gonna seem like five minutes. Pacho and Moonie dropped me back at the apartment. “Make sure you call me before you make any moves,” Moonie said. “If you need a ride over to the Spot, Pacho will pick you up. G said you supposed to stay close to the apartment and just chill until he gets back, so I’ll give you a buzz a few times every day just to check. Okay?”
I nodded a few times and tried not to look like I was in a rush. As soon as they pulled off I ran upstairs to the apartment, changed into my hooch gear, and threw a bunch of stuff in a Coach bag and then called Rita. All the shit I packed was raggedy in comparison to the way I dressed when G was around. Yeah, I still had diamonds and designer labels hanging everywhere, but I was done with all those high heels and slinky-ass dresses G liked to see me in. For the next five days it was gonna be short-shorts, halters, jeans, and tank tops. And no damned makeup either. I wasn’t putting nothing on my face except a little bit of lipstick and nothing hot was gonna touch my hair. It would get washed in the shower and brushed out with a little Pink Oil Moisturizer, then thrown back in a long curly-ass ponytail. That was about as much trouble as I was willing to go through since G wasn’t gonna be around to make me get all dolled up for nothing.
G had told me to see Moonie if I needed anything, but that was the last thing I wanted to do. He didn’t leave me no money and I’d been scared to ask for any because he would have gotten suspicious and probably ordered me to stay my ass inside the apartment. As it was, his boys had been ordered to keep their eyes on me, but they were gonna have to get up just a little bit earlier because I was outtie.
I watched from the window as Rita pulled up with her cousin Cat and gave the valet her keys. She was pushing her aunt’s Range Rover, and hitting the FDR Drive and then sliding over the Brooklyn Bridge was our ultimate goal. But first we had some shopping to do. Thank God Rita had my back with the dollars. She and Cat took me to Delancey Street and showed me how they hustled the merchants down. Then we went to Chinatown and me and Rita looked at all those naked chickens and pigs hanging in the windows while Cat boosted stuff she planned to sell in Brooklyn later on.
I had been born and raised in New York, but I was taking stuff in like a tourist. I hardly ever got to travel to Brooklyn and I’d never stepped foot on Staten Island. My eyes were wide and excited and whenever I saw a sister my age who seemed like she was out doing her own thang I felt sad because that would never be me as long as I was trapped with G.
Rita had a friend who lived in Lambert projects in the Bronx, and we hung out there for a minute. We played handball in the park across the street, and then decided to take her cousin’s two kids to the Bronx Zoo, which was another place I’d never been.
“Not even on a school trip?” Rita asked. I knew it was hard for her to understand that I’d been so sheltered, and I tried to explain that I’d gone directly from my grandmother’s house to G’s house, with nothing at all in between. And with Jimmy acting all crazy half the time there was never money for school trips or stuff like that, so on those days I just stayed at home and helped Grandmother clean house.
There was something about the zoo that bothered me though. All those damn animals locked up and stuck behind bars. All they could do was look out at the people every single day and I recognized the look in a lot of their eyes. They were bored and pissed. Pissed and bored. I’d seen that look in my own eyes on many days.
The Bronx Zoo was really big, and Rita made sure we marched our asses from one end of it to the other. I had just followed her and the kids into the stink-ass monkey house when I thought I saw a familiar face. I didn’t know how everybody else was standing that doo-doo smell, but it felt like it was getting into my mouth and skin and even in my hair.
I was trying to push my nose down into the low neck of my shirt when I saw him. He had on a white T-shirt and a beat-up-looking New York Yankees baseball cap, but it was him. A little girl was riding on his shoulders who looked to be about six. He was holding hands with a dark-skinned woman who had thick black locks down to her ass, and she had another little girl by the hand, this one slightly older.
Damn, I thought, messing around and breathing in that monkey air without even realizing it. Moonie looked just like a regular brother out chilling with his woman and his kids. He was such a small man that there was no sign of a killer in him, and the way he patted and stroked that sister and them kids almost made me jealous that he had a regular life outside of the Spot while that one building was just about my whole world.
His girl was slim but had a nice body, even if she did dress like an old woman. My shorts were ten times tighter than her jeans, even though we were about the same size, and compared to the Million Man March shirt she was playing, I felt real slutty with my titties hanging out of my tiny T-shirt that said SWEET POTATOES on the front.
I couldn’t stop looking at them. Grandmother had sworn you could stare somebody into looking at you, and I guess that’s exactly what I did. All of a sudden Moonie’s head swung around and his eyes jumped dead on me. Scared that he’d bust me out to G, I tried to step behind a fat white man but I wasn’t fast enough. For the briefest second we stared at each other and what I saw in his eyes looked a lot like disgust. When I blinked again he was walking away, pulling his woman quickly through the crowd. I followed him with my eyes as far as I could. Gone were the fine clothes and the jewelry and the playa-daddy image. The pants he wore looked like some white-boy Levi’s and his sneaks were dirty and run over on the sides. It was like Moonie had completely shed his G-Spot persona for the day, and the sight of him with his family stayed with me for a good long while.
Five days went by in a big fat blur. I barely slept at all we were so busy running all over New York trying to see and do every damn thing we could. Rita liked showing me around. She had been on her own for so long that it was hard for her to believe that I had never gone to the Statue of Liberty or ridden the Staten Island ferry. She was real generous with me, too, offering to buy me outfits and sandals when we shopped, but I kept reminding her that I had more clothes than I knew what to do with and I promised she could come upstairs and raid my closet and pick out anything she wanted when she took me back home.
Day five snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking. It was almost time to head back to the boring routine that was my life, and I had my lip poked out in resentment. It was my last night out, so I got loose. I put on my tightest booty-chokers and Rita took me to East New York to a house party where I slow-grinded for the very first time with some guy I didn’t even know! I didn’t wanna know him either, and when we pushed our way into the crowd and he asked me my name I just smiled and shook my ass. He was on the short side but he had a nice smile and that cologne he was wearing had cost over two hundred dollars a bottle. Best of all, he was a black man with a dick, and tonight that was my only requirement.
We started out dancing to a fast song, and even though I hadn’t danced in so long that I probably looked crazy and off beat, the way dude was running his hands all over me told me he didn’t care. He got that look on his face real quick. You know, the one where his tongue gets stuck between his teeth and he breathes real hard. Then the DJ changed the mix and threw on a slow jam, and as Maxwell’s voice surrounded us I got bold and stepped straight into his body. He grabbed my ass and grinded, tearing me up, and I let him, too. Swaying to the music, I closed my eyes and let him rub his hard dick between my legs until my panties were soaked.
Two fast songs later we were still humping. “Let’s go, Juicy!” Rita came up behind me and snatched me so hard I stumbled and he let me go. I backed away from him in a daze. I felt like he had dry-fucked me right there in the middle of that crowded living room, and I guess in a way he had.
Next stop was Cat’s house in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Her people were throwing a fish fry and a card game and I sat watching from the sidelines because the only thing I knew how to play was pitty-pat, which was all Grandmother had allowed in her house, with her sanctified self. Even though she ran numbers on a daily, me and Jimmy couldn’t even gamble with matchsticks at her table.
They had about five tables going. Rita and Cat were playing a game of Spades with two fine-ass guys, and the cutest one was Cat’s older brother. His name was Frankie and he couldn’t keep his eyes off of me. He kept looking at me over his cards and his partner kept getting mad as hell cause Frankie reneged twice from studying me instead of his hand.
Cat had a big-ass family. I wasn’t used to so much action in such a small place! There were mad people coming and going, chicken and fish being fried, beer being drunk, and weed being smoked. It wasn’t long before I needed a break. I stood up and stretched, then went into the small bedroom where Cat had told me to stash my Louis Vuitton, and stuck my head out the second-floor window.
It was after two but you couldn’t tell it without a watch. Brooklyn never slept, and the stoop downstairs was packed and the streets were still rocking. I heard somebody come into the room behind me and I turned around so fast I banged into the window frame.
“Ouch,” I said, rubbing my head. “You scared me.”
He closed the door behind him and the only lights in the room came from the streetlight burning outside. “You ain’t gotta be scared of me,” Frankie said. “I’m harmless.”
I laughed and leaned against the windowsill. “I heard that one before. That’s what they all say. Right before they try to jump your bones.”
“Don’t lean back too far,” he cautioned, “or getting your bones jumped won’t be your problem. Breaking them will.”
I don’t know what got into me-okay, yeah I do. I was still stoked from the house party and Frankie looked better than sweet potato pie. Best of all, he was my age and his body was all that. It felt so damn different having a casual conversation with a guy like him, just a regular brother whose eyes told me everything I needed to hear. I turned around and leaned back out the window and when I heard him catch his breath I sure as hell knew why. Yeah, I had some nice titties, but it was the ass that got them every time. I had a phat ass on a fine frame, and the shorts I was rocking fit me just like panties.
He came up behind me and I bit my lip when I felt how close he was.
“Ain’t nothing happening out there that’s better than what we can make happen up in here.”
My stuff was throbbing but I played it off without turning around. “How you trying to step to me? I don’t know you like that. Shit. I already forgot what you said your name was.”
He laughed behind me, then nudged me over and squeezed in next to me until he was looking out the window, too. “My name is Frankie. Cat’s my little sister.”
“I still don’t know you.”
“So? I don’t know you either, but you don’t see me complaining.”
I cut my eyes at him, then laughed again. He was too cute.
“Pretty hair, pretty lips… I see why they call you Juicy. What’s your real name?”
“That is my real name. Juicy.”
Now he was laughing. “Yeah, okay. I must look like a fuckin herb. Your name is probably Esmerelda or some shit like that.”
“It’s Juicy!” I shrieked, and elbowed him the best I could in that narrow space. The next thing I new his lips were all over mine, his tongue wiggling halfway down my throat.
“W-w-wait…”
I broke our kiss and pulled myself back until I was standing in the darkness. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, then dried it on my shorts. I had been dying to be kissed, but not like that. “What you do that for?”
He stood up beside me. “Because you wanted me to.”
Yeah, I might have thought I wanted him to kiss me, but as wet as his mouth was and the way he had wiggled his tongue all over my tonsils had made me think twice.
“That was sloppy, Frankie. Don’t no woman wanna be kissed like that.”
He tried to play it off. “I ain’t never had no complaints.”
There were two twin beds in the room. A pile of clothes was on one, and the other one had a red spread over it. “C’mere,” I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the empty bed. “Swallow everything in your mouth except your tongue and your teeth,” I commanded. “Now pay close attention. I’ll be the teacher, you try hard not to be no fool.”
I sat on Frankie’s lap and took his ass to school, showing him how to kiss me just the way I was kissed in my fantasies. He was a real fast learner, too. It wasn’t long before I felt heat rising from his groin and I was warming up, too. He slid me off of his lap and lay me back on the bed, pressing his body on top of mine.
Frankie kissed my lips and pulled my shirt up to stare at my naked titties. I let my hands flow through his curly hair, over his back, and down his ass. A door slammed and I heard a woman cursing somebody out on the stoop. I wondered if Frankie had locked the door behind him but I was too far gone to tell him to go check.
I felt his hands lowering the zipper on my shorts and I sucked hard on his bottom lip. He was inside my panties and I raised my hips off of the bed as he parted my pussy hairs and slid his fingers inside me. I shivered deliciously as he thrust into my wetness then used my juices to massage my clit. He whispered that I should spread my legs open and bend my knees, and I did. He moved his fingers deeply inside me and we settled into a pace: him plunging deep, then coming out to rub my clit and slide quickly back inside of me, and me holding on to his wrist and slamming my hips up to meet him as hard as I could. My stomach muscles clenched and I squeezed my legs closed around the hardness of his fingers. I was in heaven, it felt so good. I moved my ass in ways I had never moved it before, not even with my electric thruster. Frankie started moaning, too, and I looked down and saw his hand sliding in and out of my wet pussy. That shit looked so good I screamed into his chest as an orgasm tore through my body and completely blew my mind.
I wanted him to hold me for a minute while I caught my breath, but Frankie wasn’t having it. He wanted to get his too. He pushed his baggy jeans down, and pulled his dick through the pee hole in his drawers. I almost laughed when I saw what he was packing. It was the size of a magic marker, maybe even skinnier. He pushed my hand down on it and it felt wet and slimy.
“Hold up,” I whispered, yanking my hand back and wiping it on the spread before pulling up my shorts. I fixed my shirt and closed my zipper.
“Whatchoo doing? Open your goddamn legs.”
I pushed myself up on my elbows. “You got a rubber?”
“What?” He sucked his teeth and groaned, and I knew I was off the hook.
“You heard me. A rubber. Grown men who fuck usually carry rubbers.”
“I just ran out. But I trust you. Your pussy is clean and I can tell you ain’t got nothing. Besides, ain’t you on the pill or something?”
I shook my head and sat all the way up on the bed. “Nope. I ain’t on shit cause my man can’t make no babies and he don’t fuck out. You ain’t running up in me raw.”
He hesitated for a minute, then pushed his dick back in his pants. “You didn’t mind raw when I was making your ass come.”
I shrugged. A finger was one thing. A dick was something else. Besides, I wasn’t attracted to him no more. I had gotten as much as I wanted from Frankie and now all I wanted him to do was leave me alone.
“Why’ont you go to the store or something? You got money, right? Go buy a pack of condoms if you want some pussy.”
He got up off the bed and fixed his clothes. “Don’t go nowhere.” He pointed at me. “We gone finish this shit. I’ma give you some dick like you never had before, Miss Juicy. You just wait right here.”
I looked at him and smiled. He must was gonna pick up a spare dick at the Spanish bodega because his finger was bigger than what he had in his pants. I watched from the window as he jumped down the stairs on the stoop and took off down the street looking for an open store.
Grabbing my purse from the closet I went back out to the kitchen and snatched a beer from Rita’s hand. “I’m ready to go, Rita.” I gave her a sad-ass look, then touched the low part of my stomach. “Cramps.”
Ten minutes later I was riding in the Range Rover with the window down when I spotted Frankie coming out of a late-night corner store. “Later baby!” I screamed out the window, then me and Rita bust out laughing as he held his hands in the air like Yo, what the fuck is up?
G and Jimmy were due in the next afternoon, but I’d had a good last night out. We went to Rita’s aunt’s house and stayed up talking and listening to music most of the night. I wet Rita’s hair and put it in some flat twists, and she put one big French braid down the back of my head, then we each took a pair of clean panties and tied them around our heads like scarves.
I laid down for the night with a smile on my face. Even though I had silk sheets and a ten-thousand-dollar bed waiting for me on Central Park West, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so happy, and I got the best sleep of my life laying right there next to Rita on a pallet on her aunt’s living room floor in one of the worst neighborhoods in Brooklyn.