I saw bullets rip through the faces of adolescents.
I saw mothers abandon their kids. I saw fathers go out for milk to never return. I saw kids turn into killers. Cops steal and grandparents raise infants around here.
I saw kids slap spit out of adults.
I saw the devil. I saw dude shake dude’s hand before whipping out his gun and making dude put his hands up.
We go through midlife crises at fifteen around here.
I saw friends kill friends. I saw friends kill friends and then attend their wake. I saw teachers tell kids that they’d die like their parents or siblings.
What does hope look like?
I saw shot dudes in wheelchairs be shot again while they sat in their wheelchairs.
I saw shots that made bodies flip. I saw colostomy bags burst, guts spill, brains on the curb, brains on the wall, brains by the car, contusions, limbs knocked off, faces rearranged, eyeballs, small intestines, and flesh chunks. I saw flesh sizzle like minute steaks.
We all self-medicate around here.
I saw murder after murder. I’ve smelled murder. I saw bodies rot. I read 150 teen obituaries — all with short bios. I know hate.
I saw barefoot families, I saw drug money buy churches, I saw hoop dreams spark and fade. I saw all types of dreams spark and fade. I saw house raids, I saw families evicted, I saw AIDS spread, I saw thousands made, and lost right in the middle of the place where cops enforce, terrorize and collect — I saw it.
I saw it all.
B ANG! BANG! BANG!
Aunt Kim’s front door almost thumped off the hinges, while I was rolling a celebratory blunt because College Park, Georgetown, Loyola, and a couple of other schools were letting me in.
“Kim, kill the music!” I said, looking through the peephole.
I opened the door without removing the latch to see Ron G prop both hands on his knees like kickstands, his oval belly peeking out of his shirt.
“Ron, what the fuck is up?” I said.
He breathed heavily. “Yo, find Gee. They shot Bip!” he said–with his pudgy face pinching through the door.
“What?” I opened the door to let him in, but he continued down the hall shouting.
“Gee! Gee! Where you at! We got a problem! Gee!”
I didn’t believe that shit. My bro Bip’s not dead. Did I hear shots? East Baltimore is a gun range, so I always heard shots. Shots ring out in east Baltimore all day — especially when it’s hot out. People always get shot but not Bip. Fuck Ron, I thought.
“Kim, Ron lost his got damn mind!”
You’d have to be psycho to shoot at my bro. Bip was the neighborhood dope man, a real star. He employed everyone, paid cops, financed the lives of murderers, fed and housed ex‑cons until they could feed and house themselves. Bip’s like Superman mixed with Jesus. He’s not dead.
Ron G’s stupid — I think he dropped out of kindergarten. Plus he’s on acid, sherm, loose pills, and some other shit — it probably wasn’t even Bip, I thought.
I dialed Bip’s cell to tell him how stupid Ron G was, but I only got the voice mail “You reached the right nigga at the wrong time, hit me back — one.”
BEEP.
“Kim, stay here and roll another blunt while I see what’s up,” I said.
She was all frowned up like “Be carefullllll!” Bip and I aren’t her kids, but she always treated us like we were. I felt her anxiety in my chest as I bounced.
“Please, baby, be careful!” she called out again as I shut the door.
Bip was driving a T‑Top Z300 that day. He bought it from a Jewish car wholesaler named Seth. Seth was known for getting cars with clean titles and untraceable paperwork for young dealers. Seth helped Bip get that 300, a GS, and my Acura. The front of our house was a car show.
Bip’s 300 was whiter than untouched snow with an identical shade on the wheels. It had white piping and the inside was reupholstered with beet-juice-colored leather.
I saw it double-parked a block away from Kim’s.
Everyone knew Bip’s car — he called it blow. That day, it was right in front of the food spot CC’s Carryout with the hazards on so I knew he was in the gathering crowd I saw. I couldn’t wait to tell him the stupid shit that Ron had said, and, more important, how I got accepted into college.
He’s going to flip over the amount of schools I gained acceptance to, especially since none of the guys in our family ever went to college.
Bip was probably pushing up on a girl, I thought — we were on a mission to book and bone every woman that we weren’t related to. Bip was winning — only because he’s older. But I was on his heels and had gotten three phone numbers the previous day.
Hurk, my best friend and one of Bip’s workers, spotted me swimming through the mob. Hurk towered over all of us like an NBA player — his knuckles practically scraped the ground when he walked.
“Dee, oh God, Deeee!” he cried.
Hurk ran up on me like a crazed fan. His long face balled like crumpled paper, his dreads whipped every which way as he came toward me. He squeezed me hard, like he was trying to make my shoulders touch.
“Shorty, Im’a murk dem niggas that rocked Bip, put that on my muther.” Tears scaled his face. I remained silent but the crowd didn’t.
Bip’s not dead and Hurk’s just looking for trouble; he’s been like that since we were two. “Nooooooooooooo,” he howled as I pulled away, “Get the fuck off me, Hurk, I need to catch my brova.”
I just needed to get through the mob of gossipers. I thought he was probably stuck in CC’s because there were a million people blocking the door. I elbowed through the crowd. Everyone gazed at me like I walked in class late. Wet eyes and bent faces circled the scene. I inched closer. The Koreans who ran CC’s Carryout clutched their babies while peeking through the caged door.
A young black man, blood all over his face, covered by a still sheet laid stretched across the concrete. The dead kid had on orange-and-white CB34 sneakers freckled with blood poking out from under the sheet. Everybody in the hood had those kicks — I was wearing them — so that could have been anybody lying there. Someone moved the body and his arm dangled.
I saw Bip’s diamond two-tone gold bracelet gleam.
I ducked under the yellow warning tape and pushed past the beat cop. The sheet folded down a little as I stood closer. Brains and blood everywhere. Then the noise stopped and a cold silence blanketed the crowd.
“Bip, get up!” I begged. “Get up. Come on!”
It was the first time he ever ignored me. “Please yo!”
The beat cop gathered himself and slammed me down next to my brother. He flipped me like a pissy mattress, positioning for a chokehold. Fuck fighting back. I wished I had died too.
Excerpt from The Cook Up by D. Watkins, published by Grand Central Publishing. Copyright © 2016 D. Watkins.
Available everywhere May 3, 2016.
