Jimmy didn’t speak to me for three whole days. Even though I kept going to his room trying to talk to him, cooked his favorite foods, and tried real hard to reconnect with him, he just wasn’t having it.
“Don’t kiss his ass,” Gino told me as I stood in the kitchen cutting up some potatoes to make Jimmy some fries. “He ain’t no baby, Juicy. Jimmy is a man and you need to start treating him like one.”
“But I disappointed him, Gino. He loves G, and it fucked him up when he caught us like that.”
Gino shrugged. “Then he shouldn’t have come looking for nothing he couldn’t handle. Besides, everything is gonna come to a head one day anyway. If it wasn’t Jimmy who checked us it woulda been somebody else.”
I felt miserable inside. I didn’t want to lose Gino, but I loved my brother, too.
“So are you saying we should stop then?”
Gino gave me a look like Girl, are you crazy? and then he snuck and kissed me on the neck. “Hell no. I don’t ever wanna stop being with you, Juicy. Not for G or for Jimmy. You know I wasn’t gonna hurt your brother. But I couldn’t let him disrespect you like that neither.”
I turned the flame down under the pan and dropped in a handful of fries, jumping back when the grease sizzled and popped out at me. “I know. But still, try to understand where he’s coming from.”
Jimmy eventually came around and started talking to me again. I knew he wouldn’t stay mad at me forever, and I also knew that he would never betray me to G. But putting the burden of my secret on him wasn’t fair to him either, and I would have done anything to turn back the clock to erase that disappointed look from my brother’s eyes.
The summer was about to end and I was looking forward to going back to school. Yeah, my life still revolved around G and the Spot, but now I had Gino to fill all the holes and give me the love and the loving I had been missing.
It made me crazy trying to do everything on the sneak tip. I kept wishing that somehow G would just disappear and let me and Gino and Jimmy live happily ever after. But I wasn’t a stupid young girl no more. I knew those fairy-tale thoughts were whack. And a part of me also knew that Gino had been right when he said things were gonna come to a head one day. But what I didn’t know was how big that head would get and how far the fallout would reach. I guess that’s why you should be careful what you pray for. Just in case you end up getting it.
By Thanksgiving Jimmy was in so deep with G I was scared I’d never get him out. I still hadn’t figured out how to get out of my situation, with or without G’s money, and I was scared that any day Gino was gonna announce that his six months were over and he was skying up.
He’d told me that G was only a few weeks away from closing a deal with some big-time connects in B-More, and that he’d already leased a building and started handpicking the crew he was gonna take down there with him to launch the opening of the G-Spot 2.
“Is he taking you?” I asked, hoping like hell the answer was no.
Gino shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s his plan, but it sure ain’t mine. When I leave Harlem I’m heading back west, not south, so to answer your question, no.”
Somehow that didn’t make me feel any better. So what he wasn’t going to Baltimore. He hadn’t said shit about taking me with him out west neither. And even if he did, I could forget about making Jimmy go with me. He was on G’s dick so hard he should have been gay. There was no way he was leaving that man. Jimmy would leave me first, and as close as we were, that was some knowledge that hurt me to my heart.
It was three days before Christmas when Jimmy came home one night and told me he was making an overnight run to Atlantic City. G was at the Spot counting drugs in the cut room, and me and Gino were decorating the Christmas tree that G had brought home earlier in the day.
We’d never been big on Christmas growing up. It was easy to overlook it when there was never any money to buy presents. G always bought me and Jimmy expensive gifts for the holiday, but this would also be the first time we put up a tree in celebration of it, and the only reason he went out and got one was because Gino said he wanted one.
Like I said, G wasn’t cheap. He believed in buying quality shit, and I was so happy when I saw the frosted glass ornaments and handmade balls and bells he had picked out for the tree. At first I was mad that he hadn’t thought about letting me choose what to get, but as usual his taste was good and I knew I couldn’t have picked anything prettier or classier myself.
I was standing back giving Gino directions on where to place the angel when Jimmy walked in.
“Hey. That tree is hot.” He kissed me on the cheek and that’s when I saw the overnight bag he was holding in his hand.
“Where you going?”
“South,” he said.
“ Baltimore?”
“Nah. Jersey. I’ll be back sometime tomorrow.”
This is what it had come to between Jimmy and me. I couldn’t even tell him what to do anymore, and I sure couldn’t forbid him to do anything G had assigned him to do. I knew we hadn’t lost our closeness, but Jimmy had moved beyond my reach and I didn’t like it. If he had been stepping up to manhood in a different way then that would have been cool. But all this drug-running, money-washing shit he was involved in scared me.
And I knew that I had to take some of the blame for what was going on. I had convinced myself that being Granite McKay’s woman was going to set me and my brother up lovely for life, when actually it had made us slaves to his operation. Jimmy wouldn’t even be in this situation if I hadn’t gotten with G and dragged him into G’s world. In trying to take care of my brother I had actually ruined him, and while I didn’t like to even think about it, in my heart I knew this was all my fault.
“Be careful, Jimmy,” was all I could say.
He nodded. “I’m cool, Juicy. I’ma stop and check out Flex for a minute, then I’m out.”
I almost dropped the glass ornament I was holding. “Flex? You hanging out with Flex now?”
“C’mon, Juicy. You know me and Flex go way back. What? You still wondering about that shit with Macaroni? Or since we live in the big house and Fletcher’s still out in the fields he can’t be my man no more?”
I shrugged. “That’s not what I’m saying. I just thought… nothing, Jimmy.”
He reached out and hugged me again. “Stop all that damn worrying all the time. Looking like Grandmother. Ain’t nothing gonna happen to me. I’ma hit the Lower East Side and check out my dawg, then I’m headed south for the night.”
When Jimmy didn’t show up by the next night I started to get scared. I called his cell phone but the answering service picked up, and he hadn’t called the house at all. I walked around the Spot with my chest hurting, I was so worried about him. Everybody else was dancing and fucking and drinking and eating and doing their normal thing, when my world felt like it was spinning out of control and I couldn’t stop it.
I sat at the bar and for the first time I actually considered ordering a drink. My nerves were just that bad. Cooter came down wiping the counter and smiling at me, and for a minute I saw something flicker in his eyes, and then it was gone.
“Y-y-ou want something, J-j-j-uicy? Some s-s-soda? A bottle of w-w-water?”
He’d gotten his stutter back. I shook my head. “Nah. My stomach is too upset to put anything in it. Has Jimmy called?”
Cooter dropped his rag. “N-n-nah. I ain’t h-h-heard from him.”
He bent down and picked up his rag, and as soon as he walked away I snatched up the bar phone and called Gino.
“Gino,” I said quickly. “Jimmy ain’t back yet. I think something mighta happened to him.”
“Why you think that?”
“Because he told me he was staying in Jersey overnight, and then coming right back home.”
“I’m running the card room right now, but did you ask G what time Jimmy was due back?”
I sighed. “No. Not yet. I’ll go ask him now.”
“I don’t know where the fuck your brother is,” G said when I stopped him on his way toward his office. “He shoulda had his ass back here with my package by early this afternoon.”
G was talking bad, but he sure didn’t look concerned.
“Well, do you know if he at least made it down there safe? What if he got into an accident? Or maybe the cops got him? Ain’t there somebody you can call in Jersey to see if they know where he is?”
G unlocked his office door and stepped inside. “If the cops had him he would have called. If he wrecked the car, the cops would have called. Jimmy’s smelling his fuckin nuts, that’s the problem. I thought I could trust him so I let him have a lot of area to move, and now the niggah’s trying to test me.”
I couldn’t believe this shit he was talking.
“G! You know damn well that boy ain’t testing you! Jimmy loves you! He put you over me, and if it ever came down to it he would die for you. How could you even fix your mouth to accuse him of being shady?”
He turned around and stared at me. “Money will do that shit to you. It makes a whole lot of niggahs act shady.” Then he left me standing there in the hall and closed the door in my face.
Now I was really scared, but I didn’t know what to do. Who could I call in Jersey? Nobody. I didn’t know the connect Jimmy was going to meet, and after what had happened to me in Camden, I didn’t wanna know none of those Jersey niggers neither.
I thought about Flex and wondered if Jimmy had told him anything. Other than going over to his territory in Taft projects, I had no way of getting in touch with Flex either.
I went to the coatroom and got my cute little swing coat and put it on. Since all I ever did was run out of the apartment and jump into Pacho’s warm ride, I never bothered with a hat or gloves unless it was way past cold and downright nasty outside. I knew I was gonna freeze like a mother, but I didn’t care. G was talking shit that didn’t make no sense, Gino was too busy to pay me any mind, and my brother was out there somewhere doing who knows what.
I cornered Moonie behind the bar and asked him for fifty dollars. He looked at me like I was crazy, but I think the tears coming out my eyes convinced him that I was desperate. I had never asked Moonie for anything before, and I gave less than a fuck about him running back and telling G, just as long as I had enough to get down to Taft Houses and talk to the man who had been the last person, as far as I knew, to see my baby brother.