Array Ashley - Tale of the Murda Mamas

I smiled and pulled my hand away from Murder’s. “I have one more thing to tell you,” I said. He was silent as he waited for me to continue. “I answered your phone,” I said. My words hit him like a ton of bricks, and his face collapsed into a mixture of sorrow and anger. “I’m on that now. Every time, I’ll have your paper put aside for you and I’ll keep your books on full in here. When you get out, you’ll have money waiting on you.”

Murder put his face in his hands and shook his head from side to side. “I didn’t want that for you, Miamor. That’s not for you. You deserve better than that.”

I stood to my feet and wiped the tears from my eyes. “I don’t think a better life is in the cards for me,” I whispered.

Murder stood and pulled me close, putting his hands in my back jean pockets as we hugged. He pulled a picture out of my pocket. “What’s this?” he asked.

I had meant to give it to him when I first arrived. It was a picture of us together on my birthday, holding up bottles of champagne.

He pulled me near him one more time and whispered in my ear. “Be careful. Never think twice about pulling a trigger

Turn your heart cold, Miamor. Think like a nigga, because acting like a bitch will get you killed. It’s the only way you’ll make it. Slump a nigga before he can slump you. No body, no weapon-”

“No murder,” I whispered, finishing his sentence, our lips so close together that they touched when I spoke the words.

He pulled back and looked me in the eye. “You’ve already done your first job,” he said in surprise.

I nodded my head, stood on my tip toes and kissed his cheek. “Good bye, Murder.”

He held onto my hand as I walked away, until the distance finally separated us. “Holla at me, Miamor… at least once a month to let me know you’re okay!” he yelled after me.

I nodded my head in agreement, and then walked out of his life.

When I returned to the apartment, the atmosphere was tense. Everyone was silent and staring at me in suspicion as soon as I set foot inside the door.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Robyn asked.

I looked at her like she was crazy, and bypassed her without responding as I went into my room. The silly bitch obviously didn’t know about me, because if she did, she would have known that I would smack fire from her ass for talking to me out the side of her neck.

She followed behind me. “Look, you’re the one who said we should lay low and let the streets cool down before we get to spending money, then when we wake, up you’re ghost,” she said. “What are we supposed to think?”

“I don’t really give a damn what you think. I had to handle something, that’s all you need to know,” I replied.

The girls made their way into my room, and Anisa stood by the door. I could feel her staring at me. I knew she wanted to know where I had disappeared to so early in the morning, but I wasn’t telling. Nobody needed to know. Where I went was my business. Fuck all them hoes!

“Well, I’ve been thinking,” Beatrice stated as she sat on my bed and looked around at everyone in the room. “Y’all didn’t even know about the money in the safe before we told you, so that means y’all were there for something else. We want in.”

“Want in?” Anisa repeated.

“Yeah, whatever y’all got going on, we want in. There is only two of y’all. Without us, things could have turned out different for y’all last night. I don’t know what exactly y’all do, but I know this plush condo and that Benzo you driving don’t come cheap. We want in,” Beatrice asserted.

Anisa and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows, and as if on cue, the phone began to ring.

Ring! Ring!

I was skeptical at first, but I knew that having more chicks on our team could be a good thing. Our chances of being caught slipping would decrease drastically if we hooked up with Robyn, Aries, and Beatrice.

Ring! Ring!

“A’ight,” I said. “We’re not into the petty robbery game though.”

“We don’t give a fuck what you into it. If it’s about money, then we’re with it,” Robyn spoke up confidently. Ring! Ring!

“We’ll see,” I replied as I stood up and rushed to pick up the phone, with them hot on my trail. I took down the details of the call and turned around to face the group.

“You want in?” I asked.

“We want in,” Aries reiterated impatiently.

I handed her a piece of paper that had the name of our next hit on it. “Murder that nigga. It needs to be done quickly and quietly,” I instructed, and then walked away, leaving them to their thoughts.

Anisa followed behind me, and once we were in my room alone, she closed the door. “Are you crazy!” she asked.

“They want in, so let them prove that they can handle it. If they fuck up, we will handle them,” I responded. “Just relax.”

The next day, I received a text message from a number I didn’t recognize: WATCH THE NEWS! I frowned when I read the words, but went into Anisa’s room and told her to turn the channel:

“… This is Allison Fisher, reporting for WWOR. Gun violence has once again taken a hold of the Bronx. Thaddeus Johnson was gunned down in his vehicle today on East 142 nd Street. Witnesses say that two unidentified females were riding a red motorcycle, when they pulled up to a traffic light next to Mr. Johnson’s car and opened fire. This young woman was the passenger in Mr. Johnson’s car when the shooting took place. “Can you tell us what you saw?” the reporter asked.

The girl’s voice shook as she replied, “It all just happened so fast. All I remember is listening to the music one second, and hearing loud gunshots the next. I was ducked down in my seat. I was too afraid to look up. There was so much blood. I thought that I would die. I can’t believe this happened…”

Anisa and I watched the newscast in shock. The girl who was being interviewed was Robyn, and the guy that had been killed was the hit I had given them. Anisa chuckled and said, “She deserves an Oscar for that performance.”

“They pulled it off!” I whispered in disbelief as I sat back against the headboard on Anisa’s bed. Anisa looked at me and shook her head from side to side. My cell phone rang, and an unknown number popped up. “Hello?” I answered.

“So, we’re in?” I instantly recognized Aries’ distinctive accent.

“You’re in,” I replied with a smile. The average type of chick would not have been able to pull off what the three of them had. They were ruthless and conniving. They were just like me, and now they were on my team.

A year passed, and life was good! Anisa, Beatrice, Robyn, Aries and I were lying in the sun on a cruise ship just off the coast of Miami. We had planned that particular trip to celebrate our success. After Anisa and I got to know the other girls, we knew that they could be very helpful in our newfound profession. Before I even knew it, we established the Murder Mamas. At first it was a little joke, but the name was fitting and sort of stuck. We all even got “Murder Mama” tattooed on ourselves to show our allegiance.

It did not take long for niggas to catch wind of us. We had expanded and took jobs from Jersey, Philly, and even D.C. The word spread quickly in the streets, because our phone constantly rang for new jobs. We only took jobs by referral, meaning you would have to know someone that hired us before to even have a conversation with us about our services. We had a secret society, and the only thing we asked for was trust. We sometimes set up clowns that were stunting too hard and robbed them, but we only did that when we traveled out of town. Our main hustle was murder-for-hire. That’s what paid the bills.