Street Soldier 2 Read Free Page B

as I sat on a stool behind him. I wasn’t in business to give nobody nothing for free. If people were willing to pay the white man for his products, then they damn sure had to pay me. The only person who got shit free from me was Mama. I had to look out for her, even though she hadn’t been looking out for herself. She was still seeing Raylo’s abusive ass. We had squashed our beef with each other some time ago, but I still didn’t like the fact that he was hitting on my mama. For years, he’d been saying that shit would stop, but it hadn’t. I guess they had this kind of relationship where that kind of head-banging mess was okay. If she was cool with it, I had to be. But I knew that it would be near impossible for me to continue living with her under those conditions. Eventually, somebody would get hurt and I didn’t want it to be me. That’s why I moved out and never looked back. Mama and Raylo could continue their dysfunctional life, as I wanted no part of it.
    Before I left the liquor store, I helped Nate knock out a few customers, then I filled a brown paper bag with the items Mama had asked for earlier, which were a bottle of ketchup, some mayo, a Vess Soda, and some Doritos. She also needed some aspirin for her headache, and when I got to her house on Goodfellow Boulevard, I definitely knew why. The whole left side of her face was fucked up and I didn’t have to ask why.
    â€œDon’t be looking at me like that,” she said, taking the brown paper bag from my hand. “I asked for this stuff four hours ago, Prince. Had my mouth set for some potato salad and I don’t even want it now.”
    Yeah, she wanted it, but I ignored her tone. It’s the way she and I got down, and even though we loved each other, the respect wasn’t quite there. Not as far as conversation was concerned, but I was doing my best to change some things around. I was getting older and was starting to realize some things that I hadn’t seen before. Mama may have had some serious issues, but when it came down to it, she was there for me when I needed her to be—sometimes.
    â€œYou’re welcome,” I said, taking the bag away from her. I placed it on the kitchen table and pulled the mayo out from inside. “Here. Better late than never. Go ahead and fix the potato salad. I haven’t eaten all day and I’m hungry.”
    She snatched the mayo from my hand and started to whip up the potato salad. I put the other items on the counter, then headed back to the cramped bedroom that used to be mine. Mama still had everything left as I’d had it, and had even taken it upon herself to keep it clean. I wasn’t the tidiest person in the world, and my one-bedroom studio apartment above the laundromat was a mess. Maybe I could talk Mama into stopping by and cleaning up for me. She often griped when she stopped by to see me, but it never failed that she would call me trifling or nasty before she left. I told her to call before coming over, but Mama wasn’t one to play by my rules. She showed up whenever she felt like it, and many times my place looked as if a tornado had run through it.
    Thing was, I could never get down with cleaning like she could, and I didn’t have a woman—well, no one on a regular basis—who could do it for me, either. For now, I was sticking and moving with my neighbor who was fifteen years older than I was, and with a chick named Francine who had moved into the same building about a month ago. It was hard trying to juggle the two of them, but they both knew it was just a fuck thing for me. Since Nadine had been killed, and since I’d found out that the woman schoolteacher I’d been fucking was my sister, Patrice, I chilled with the whole relationship thing. I wasn’t feeling that shit at all, and at this point, it was all about making money: money for me, for my son I was dying to see again, or for the one who I still had no