K'wan - Gutter

“You don’t know how fucking stupid you sound.” She laughed. “Kenyatta, you don’t even believe what you’re trying to feed me. That’s just you trying to be difficult, as usual.”

“Go ahead with that. I’m just stating my case.”

“Well, if that’s your case, then that ass is guilty. Don’t try and front for me, cause I know you, Gutter. When you know someone is telling you right, you throw up this ignorant ass gang-banger persona. Nigga, please.”

“What you talking ’bout, woman? I’m a Crip to the heart. Don’t never forget that.”

“Oh, I would never doubt your love for your hood, but I also know that you’ve never been a dummy. If you were, I would’ve never given you any play.”

“Gave me no play?” He raised his eyebrow. “Monifa, don’t try that. If I recall correctly, you pursued me. ”

“That chronic got you all twisted. I wasn’t the one at Universal Studios talking about, ‘Aye, sis. Let me rap to you for a minute,’” she imitated him. “You followed me and my girls around that whole lot, trying to get at me. You were so cute, with your starter kit braids.”

“Fuck you, Mo,” he joked.

“Fuck you right back.”

They both slapped at each other and burst into laughter. He instinctively reached out and touched her hand. It was warm, and smooth as silk. For a second, it was as if they were still teenagers, dating at Jack in the Box. Each one’s eyes shone with lost passion, creating an uncomfortable silence. Monifa’s eyes flashed indifference, and she quickly snatched her hand back.

“Mo…”

“Don’t.” She turned her back to him. “Kenyatta, leave it alone.”

“Monifa… we need to talk about it. There was so much left unsaid.”

“I think you said it all when you left me wondering what happened,” she said, a bit more scornfully than she meant to.

“Mo… I don’t know what to say,” he admitted. “Shit got a lil crazy. Things happened that I won’t go into, but I had to jet. You know how it get in the hood.”

“Fuck the hood!” she said heatedly. “You’re always putting the hood before me.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Then what was it like?” She spun around. “Gutter, please don’t try and feed me some shit that you had two years to mull over. I was supposed to be your girl, Ken. Your heart! ‘Be my forever lady,’ remember that?”

He turned his eyes away.

“Well, I do. You took me to up to Sacramento to celebrate my twenty-first birthday,” she recalled. “We had a beautiful dinner, and you fed me ice cream. Everyone at the restaurant kept saying how cute we were. We went for a walk on the strip and talked about a life together and how you wanted to do right by me. ‘Be my forever lady,’ that’s what you whispered to me… right before you pushed me to the ground and shot that boy, because he was an enemy as you called him. On a night when we should’ve been making love until the sun came up, we ended up fugitives.” She gave a weak chuckle.

Gutter was so overcome with shame that his head felt like a lead weight when he raised it. Tears danced in the corner of her eyes, and he could tell that she was doing all she could not to cry. All she had ever tried to do was love him and he’d shitted on her. He couldn’t help but feel like a real asshole. With some effort, he managed to swallow the grapefruit-sized lump that had worked its way into his throat.

“Monifa,” he began, “I never misled you, or told you anything I didn’t mean. You deserved way better than what I gave you. Believe me, I’ve thought about you and what happened to us ever since I left.”

“Did you think about me when you made that New York bitch your wife?” she spat.

He should’ve seen that one coming.

“Don’t get all quiet on me now,” she continued. “What, you think I didn’t know about her? People talk, Kenyatta. I might be naïve, but I have ears.”

“Monifa, let’s just go somewhere and talk,” he pleaded, while reaching for her hand.

“I think we’ve both said enough.” She stepped back. “I ain’t mad no more, baby. But I’m a lot wiser for the experience. See you at the house, Gutter. ” Monifa strutted away.

Gutter was about to go after her and tell her how much he’d loved her and how the old feelings still lingered when his cell went off and the name on the screen brought him back to his senses.

“SHE WASonly seven,” Sharell sobbed into the phone.

“Baby, calm down,” Gutter said, not really being in the mood for hormones. “I know you’re upset about what you saw, but that’s why I don’t watch the news, it’s too damn depressing. Look, it’s a damn sad thing when a child is killed, but there ain’t a whole lot we can do about it. All we can do is say a prayer for the little girl and watch over our own family.”

“We can do something to stop it, Ken, but we don’t want to,” she shot back.

“You talking real reckless on the horn, Sharell,” he warned.

“Kenyatta, I’m upset not stupid. These kids are getting cut down left and right over this street shit, and everybody turns a blind eye as long as it’s not somebody they knew. It’s bullshit and you know it. I don’t want this for my family, Gutter, no white sheets.”

He sighed. “It’s not gonna be like that for us.”

“I can’t keep doing this.” She sounded exhausted.

“So what you trying to say?” he asked defensively.

“Calm down, Kenyatta, I’m not trying to say anything… Baby, we got a good life together. Kenyatta, you move my spirit in a way that a man hasn’t been able to do since my daddy was alive, but something has got to give.”

“Sharell, it’s going to get better,” he said as if the line had been rehearsed.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that, but in order for it to get better we’ve got to change the formula. In a hot minute, we’re going to be somebody’s mommy and daddy, and this child is gonna need us… both of us. I really ain’t trying to have the ‘your daddy was a good man’ talk with my baby, Ken.”

Gutter tugged at his beard in frustration. “Sharell, you know what it is, so don’t come at me with this. I know what you want, and I know what I gotta do to get it, but I gotta be who I am.”

“Ken, I know who you are and I’d never try and change that, but I’m asking you to look at the bigger picture. I’m tired of not being able to shop at the mall or go out to dinner without having a bodyguard. I want a life, Ken, a life and a family. I deserve as much.”

“I know,” he said, more to himself than anyone else.

“Then act like it.”

“A’ight, Sharell, we’ll talk about it when I get back. I gotta get back to the house, fam is waiting for me.”

“Umm-hmm.” There was doubt in her tone. “I know you’re in the middle of something right now, Kenyatta, but best believe when you get back from California we’ve got some talking to do.”

“You got that, baby. I love you.”

“I love you too, Ken, and keep that in mind while you’re out there with them big braid-wearing West Coast broads,” she remarked. Gutter laughed, but she didn’t. “I’m serious, Ken. I’d hate to have to come out there and clown, you don’t wanna see my ghetto side.”

“Nah, I don’t wanna see that. Don’t even trip, ma, you know this bone belongs to you.” He grabbed his crotch as if she could see him through the phone.

“You better know it. Now go ahead and handle your business, I’ll talk to you later.” She ended the call.

Sharell’s ass is a trip, he thought to himself. She was the only person he knew who would use something she saw on the news to prompt a lecture on life issues. She had to know that the set flowed through his veins, and was a part of him. Still, hearing about that child getting caught up in his turf war struck him like a physical blow. Though he wasn’t the shooter, he still felt in some way responsible for her death. He had passed the death sentence on the other side, so whether he had been there or not, the blood was on his hands.